From the dry land to deep sea: research infrastructures for the distributed laboratory over the sea

The need of an holistic approach to the study of the marine environment pushed scientists to create the premises, build and implement a set of research infrastructures for the Distributed Laboratory over the Sea. That was the goal of the IDMAR project. The spatial observations carried out at the sea surface do not allow penetrating into the third dimension of the marine environment and there is still a limited knowledge of the natural processes developing along the water column from shallow to abyssal depth of the sea. There is also the fourth dimension, the time, which is of basic importance to describe the temporal evolution of the processes and their possible correlations. IDMAR developed over a relatively short time span (less than four years) with the aim of creating a bridge between the Sicilian distributed laboratory and the European Research Infrastructures through the integration of new and existing research infrastructures for marine metrology and monitoring.