The Zoo and Phytoplankton EOV Products Virtual Lab is developed by the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ), in collaboration with the Faculty of Science and Engineering at Sorbonne University and GeoHydrodynamics and Environment Research (GHER) at the University of Liège.
This demonstrator aims to provide a methodology to generate:
- zooplankton products based on in situ observations of the abundance of different zooplankton species in a region encompassing the North-East Atlantic;
- global ocean three-dimensional (3D) key phytoplankton products of chlorophyll-a (Chla) concentration, as a proxy for total phytoplankton biomass and phytoplankton functional types, as a proxy for phytoplankton diversity;
- a mechanistic model using near real-time data to quantify the relative contributions of the bottom-up and top-down drivers in phytoplankton dynamics.
Oceans, seas and watersAddressing target audiences and expressing needs
- To raise awareness and possibly influence policy
- Grants and Subsidies
• Fisheries advisory organisations: To study the availability of food resources for fish stocks and assess the effects on fish stocks.
• Marine policy officers: To address threats such as food insecurity, foreseen under the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030.
• Researchers (e.g. from environmental agencies): To contribute to the understanding of environmental conditions and factors at new scales of observations.
- Public or private funding institutions
- International Organisations (ex. OECD, FAO, UN, etc.)
- Research and Technology Organisations
R&D, Technology and Innovation aspects
Products are finalised and available for users in the VLab. Two of the data products in this Vlab were used during the Blue Cloud Hackathon. Users replicated a jupyter notebook easily with different data sources using the Blue-Cloud Data Discovery & Access service. Over the next months, activities will focus on dissemination and making sure they are used by the different users (secondary and tertiary) identified. Further enhancement of the Vlab is needed to become the point of reference. Optimising the reproducibility and scalability of the spatio-temporal scale of the products is already foreseen in the new Blue Cloud 2026 project. Secondary and tertiary users need to be brought in and make sure they can also use it. These users will be key in identifying whether additional customisation is needed
The scalability of the Vlab depends on the resources that can be provided by d4sicence
Several teams in the Blue-Cloud hackathon reproduced the Demo products in the VRE infrastructure.
The VLab will be further developed as part of the new Blue-Cloud 2026 project.
- Global
