Brussels. The European Commission announced the structure of the European Research Infrastructure EMSO (European Multidisciplinary Seafloor and Water-Column Observatory European Research Infrastructure Consortium). The eight founding countries (France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Romania, United Kingdom and Spain), legal headquarters in Rome, represent a programme to coordinate scientific marine research at the forefront in methodology. EMSO (www.emso-eu.org) is a European research infrastructure on a continental scale in the field of environmental sciences. EMSO consists of ocean observatories whose objective is to provide data in order to confront the complexity of climatic changes, marine ecosystem’s defense mechanisms and natural hazards. EMSO consists of 11 marine observatories and 4 test sites in shallow waters for long-term, and near real time monitoring of environmental processes regarding the geosphere, the biosphere, the hydrosphere and their interactions. (9colonne)
