SIGNATURE OF RIVER AND ESTUARY WATERS IN SOUTHWESTERN NEW CALEDONIA

 

PROJECT SUMMARY
The objective of this work is to identify the signatures of rivers that are important vectors of sediment transport but also of dissolved elements and their fate in the plumes. Two complementary actions constitute this work. The first one was more specifically aimed at analyzing the characteristics of the water near the outlets around Greater Noumea. The sampling work started in December 2017 and will end in December 2018. A database was built from the 183 samples collected from 5 sites. It integrates more than 40 parameters for each sampling. The second action focused in 2019 and early 2020 on the monitoring of plumes in order to estimate the influence of riverine inputs on the marine environment. Three missions were conducted during this period. One of them was the opportunity to bring to the Territory Raffaele Siano, a specialist in the ecology of protists and their monitoring by environmental DNA.