Below is a list of associated projects, networks and other initiatives that support, and collaborate with, Lagoons For Life:

• Future Earth Coasts (FEC)
• UK NERC GloboLakes
• Group on Earth Observations Blue Planet (GEO BP)
• Baltic Lagoon Network (BALLOON)
• Italian Network for Ecological Research in Coastal Zones and Transitional Areas (LaguNet)

In Europe, three services (Copernicus Marine, Copernicus Climate Change, and Copernicus Land Monitoring) provide satellite-based information on different water constituents such as phytoplankton and coloured dissolved organic matter in oceanic, coastal, lagoon, estuarine and inland waters. However, these three services use different methods and approaches, while transitional waters are not fully represented yet in any of those.

CERTO is undertaking the research and development (R&D) necessary to address the above discrepancy and gap by producing harmonised water colour datasets suitable for integration in the Copernicus services. The project is using Sentinel-2 MSI and Sentinel-3 OLCI data to map water quality at the regional and European scale, across a range of water body environments to demonstrate the applicability of the new methods. Factors that have historically restricted remote sensing observations over transitional water bodies such as atmospheric interference in the satellite signal and the impacts of adjacency and bathymetry effects are investigated and mitigation techniques are being developed. All CERTO outputs shall be brought together into a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), the CERTO prototype, which can be “plugged in” the Copernicus services.

The six case studies for CERTO include three estuaries (Elbe, Tagus and Tamar) and three lagoons (Curonian, Razelm-Sinoe and Venice).