Remote sensing has played an important role in performing routine monitoring of pollution and the support it provides to the operational response efforts towards to some of the major marine incidents in the region. It also monitors the temporal changes that occur in its environment by observing the various parameters needed to asses the state of marine environment of the ROPME Region.

ROPME Region from Space

Towards achieving its goals in this field, ROPME has cooperated with a number of regional and international agencies like UNEP, NASA and RADARSAT. For example, ROPME has published in the year 2000 in collaboration with UNEP its first regional atlas on satellite data “ROPME from Space”.

In year 2003, ROPME had established its first Regional Satellite Ground Station. The station receives NASA EOS Terra and Aqua MODIS Direct Broadcast to enhance its capabilities of maritime monitoring. In addition to archiving the near real time data received from MODIS, the remote sensing unit of ROPME also houses an extensive satellites archives belonging to NOAA, AVHRR, Landsat, Radarsat, Aster and Airborne data.

This data is undergoing regular validation processes through our regional network of the individual member states, in the form of joint projects conducting insitu measurements using various instruments like for example ROPME's hand held spectrometer.

The ROPME region is characterized with a number of noticeable physical and biological events that are attributed to a number of factors like for example the anthropogenic influence. Amongst them is algae bloom / red tide, oil spills / maritime accidents, dust storms and land based activities. In addition, mapping the coastal marine ecosystems, such as coral reefs, seagrass beds, mangroves.

With regard to oil spill and algal bloom monitoring, the station in conjunction with MEMAC and Member States focal points, act as a regional early warning system in spill detection and algal bloom identification.

To revive the skills and knowledge base capabilities of ROPME members in the field of remote sensing, ROPME had established a well equipped training center to provide professionals and academics with hand-on training sessions to all interested parties.

The ROPME marine community has lent strong support to satellite remote sensing techniques that have emerged over the last 10 years in the ROPME Secretariat.