Marine plankton community responses to terrestrial dissolved organic matter input realising by CNRS-MARBEC on MEDIMEER infrastructure

An in situ mesocosm experiment to simulate a “terrestrial input of extreme event” in coastal waters is carrying out from 03 May for several weeks in the frame of the French ANR national project entitled: Microbial responses to terrestrial dissolved organic matter (DOMt) input in freshwater and marine ecosystems in a changing environment (RESTORE, National Coordinator: Fabien Joux). The DOMt was prepared with the oak forest soil, characteristic of the region around MEDIMEER in the south of France, which was mixed with the freshwater of a river near the MEDIMEER installations and maturated during the two weeks before to be added to the mesocosms filled with the marine water.

This national marine mesocosm experiment was also opened to AQUACOSM-plus Transnational Access which permitted and funded the participation of Dr. Carolina Cantoni from the Institute of Marine Sciences (CNR-ISMAR) of Trieste (Italy) in this mesocosm experiment to realise her project entitled "Dynamics of Total Alkalinity and pH during the Marine RESTORE Project". As Dr. Cantoni is one of the members of the European project JERICO-S3 (Towards a joint European research infrastructure network for coastal observatories), and as this mesocosm experiment realising in the Pilot Supersite of North-Western Mediterranean Sea of JERICO-S3, her participation to AQUACOSM-plus TA serving also to establish for the first time a synergy between JERICO-S3 observing community and AQUACOSM-plus mesocosm experimenting community.

Behzad Mostajir and Francesca Vidussi: leaders of marine RESTORE mesocosm experiment (Behzad.Mostajir@umontpellier.fr & Francesca.Vidussi@cnrs.fr).