University of Nantes is one of the rare French universities to promote interdisciplinarity. Within 21 faculties and schools, 295 specialities are represented and 63 laboratories work in all fields of knowledge. In the last 50 years University of Nantes (UN) has taken training and research to the highest level. Facing a rapidly changing world, UN invents a new model of university. This model places the student at its centre and, more than ever, the human being at the heart of its ambitions. UN actively participates in the city: 1 out of 12 Nantes residents works or studies there. UN Remote Sensing & Benthic Ecology research team has a documented experience in the study of shellfish farming ecosystems, bivalve physiology, and Earth Observation (EO) of coastal waters. In the last years, the team has developed strong links with the marine mollusk production sector, and has been recently involved in integrated multi trophic aquaculture (IMTA) projects based on co-cultivation of macroalgae, urchin and oyster. Within the TAPAS project, UN research activities include: evaluating IMTA potential in South Brittany, developing EO algorithms for water quality monitoring in shellfish farming ecosystems, coupling EO with shellfish physiology and modelling to produce spatial maps of shellfish growth potential at both regional and pan-European scales, fostering the use of EO for offshore aquaculture site selection, and integrating EO and shellfish modelling with physical-biogeochemical models to support monitoring, observation and forecasting techniques for the environmental sustainability of aquaculture.
http://www.univ-nantes.fr/english-version/
