ESONET WP4 - Demonstration Missions. MARMARA-DM final report

The Marmara Demonstration Mission (april 2008 to september 2010) was conducted within the EU-funded ESONET Network of Excellence programme: i) to characterize the temporal and spatial relations between fluid expulsion, fluid chemistry and seismic activity in the SoM ; ii) to test the relevance of permanent seafloor observatories for an innovative monitoring of earthquake related hazards, appropriate to the Marmara Sea specific environment ; and iii) to conduct a feasibility study to optimize the submarine infrastructure options (fiber optic cable, buoys with a wireless meshed network, autonomous mobile stations with wireless messenger). A total of 6 cruises were conducted, allowing the selection of the optimum sites for the future multi-parameters sea-floor observatories: i) on the Istanbul-Silivri segment, located in the seismic gap immediately south of Istanbul where intense bubbling is observed; ii) on the Western High, where gas hydrates, oil and gas seeps from the Thrace Basin were found; and iii) at the entrance of Izmit Gulf near the western end of the surface rupture associated with the 1999 Izmit earthquake. A significant research effort has also been made during Marmara-DM for testing innovative sensors for monitoring variations in the geochemical and geophysical properties of gas emissions. The conclusions of the Marmara-DM project were used to build a full implementation plan, submitted to two funding agencies as 2 different proposals, respectively MARQUAKE and MARDEP: - the MARQUAKE Proposal was submitted on november, 16th, 2010, to the FP7 Cooperation Work Programme 2011for Environment, Sub-Activity 6.1.3 « Natural Hazards », Area 6.1.3.1 « Hazard assessment, triggering factors and forecasting », Topic ENV.2011.1.3.1-1 « Towards real-time earthquake risk reduction ». Partners re : Ifremer (coodinator), ITU, AFAD, Ismar-CNR, CNRS and DEU. This proposal (see appendix in deliverable D5.3) received a mark of 10 out of 15, the negociation phase is still pending. - The MARDEP Proposal will be submitted in june 2011 to the Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (AFAD) of the Republic of Turkey (see Deliverable 6.1).