| This study aims at showing the potential of « water colour » data derived from satellite imagery to optimise the monitoring of coastal waters within the WFD, with the French Mediterranean as a study area. The work is focused on one specific parameter, the surface chlorophyll-A (chl-a) concentration of which a monthly atlas for reference to “normal” values is provided, which consists of : (i) the monthly chl-a median computed from satellite data of 2003, 2004 and 2005 ; (ii) the integration in space of these values, represented by their average over the WFD water masses (except those of very small size) ; (iii) an indicator of the spatial variability of the chl-a through the spatial standard deviation within each water mass. Another important result is the... |
