The City of Marseille has approved the renewal of the precarious occupation agreement with the Institut Méditerranéen d'Océanologie (MIO), which uses atmospheric fallout collectors installed on Frioul Island to observe the terrestrial and marine environment.
Since 2006, the Centre d'Océanologie de Marseille (COM), now the Institut Méditerranéen d'Océanologie (MIO), has been looking after the atmospheric fallout collectors installed on the Pomègues semaphore on the island of Frioul, under a free precarious occupation agreement.
At the town council meeting on Friday 9 July, the elected representatives approved the renewal of this agreement in order to continue to monitor the environment over the long term and to host more occasional scientific experiments to increase our knowledge of the islands of Marseille.
Helping to monitor the regional ecosystem
Part of national observation networks accredited by the CNRS and implemented by the MIO's atmosphere/sea department, these devices collect dust and rainwater separately, enabling monitoring of the regional ecosystem to be completed with "atmospheric inputs to the sea, temperature, salinity and current measurements at the southern limit of the Bay of Marseille, as well as meteorological and UV radiation measurements in the marine environment", explains Hervé Menchon, deputy in charge of marine biodiversity.
To optimise this observation mission, the plan this year is to replace the MTX-type atmospheric collector with an identical new machine. At the same time, an additional high-volume sampler for ambient air will be installed to filter the air and take more samples. Every week, an operator from the Institute collects the samples, which are then processed and analysed.