A growing number of seafloor observatories around the world provide power and communications for (near)-real-time monitoring of environmental processes across the geosphere, biosphere, and hydrosphere. A key strength of observatory design is its ability to address interdisciplinary objectives simultaneously across temporal and spatial scales. Depending on the application, in situ infrastructures can either be attached to a cable, which provides power and enables data transfer, or operate as platforms with cable and acoustic networks that are connected to satellite-linked buoys. Complementary sampling makes a key link with long term datasets. As a result, ocean observatories provide power, communications, sensors, and data infrastructure for continuous, high resolution, (near)-real-time, interactive ocean observations across a truly multi- and interdisciplinary range of research areas including biology, geology, chemistry, physics, engineering, and computer science; from polar to tropical environments, down to the abyss. Such coordinated data allow us to pose multivariate questions in space and time, rather than focusing on single data streams. Continuous data are required to document episodic events, such as earthquakes, submarine slides, tsunamis, benthic storms, biodiversity changes, pollution, and gas hydrate release. Together, these observatories face the next challenge in Earth-Ocean Science: How to co-ordinate ocean data acquisition, analysis, dissemination and response across provincial, national, regional, and global scales.
Contributions from any part of this scope of seafloor observatories are welcome in this session.