The Marine Information System
The IAEA's Marine Information System (MARiS) allows the search and recovery of more than 176,000 measurements
of radioactivity data in the marine environment found in seawater, biota, sediment and suspended matter.
The MARiS database and web site are maintained and developed by the Radiometrics Laboratory at the IAEA Environment Laboratories (IAEA-EL) in Monaco.
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The map shows the global distribution of seawater measurements contained in MARiS.
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Status as of May 2017 (Total measurements: 176,104)
Seawater |
118,763 |
Sediment |
39,272 |
Biota |
16,817 |
Suspended matter |
1,252 |
Database Updates
May 2017: HELCOM data updated with the HELCOM 2016 dataset. 2591 new measurements now available through MARiS.
Seawater: 622 new measurements
Biota: 270 new measurements
Sediment: 1699 new measurements
May 2016: HELCOM data updated with the HELCOM 2015 dataset. 12209 new measurements now available through MARiS.
Seawater: 2010 new measurements
Biota: 2999 new measurements
Sediment: 7200 new measurements
July 2015: 27065 new seawater measurements in the North Pacific from the public datasets released by MEXT, NRA and TEPCO.
MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology): 3275 measurements between March 2011 – January 2013.
NRA (Nuclear Regulation Authority): 2437 measurements between May 2013 – February 2015.
TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company): 21353 measurements between March 2011 – January 2014.
May 2015: 2755 new seawater measurements released predominantly in the North Pacific covering the
period 2008-2012.
MARiS Development
MARiS User Survey. The MARiS database and website are entering a period of development and upgrade
to allow the database to better serve its users. As a user of MARiS your input and comments are
essential to help guide and shape this development process. Please consider taking the MARiS User Survey,
which will take between 5-15 minutes depending on how much you have used the MARiS website.
Your input will help greatly with this development process.
MARiS News
July 2016: MARiS poster presentation at the 6th International Ra-Rn Workshop in Girona, Spain and
tweet.
June 2016: MARiS was represented at the second RiO5 (Radioactivity in the Ocean, 5 decades later) Working Group
meeting at the State Key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Science, Xiamen University, China. This meeting was immediately followed by the
RiO5 Training Course on Marine Radiochemistry
at which a lecture on marine radioactivity data and the MARiS database was given to the attending students.
Presentation available here.
May 2016: A first tweet on MARiS was sent via the
IAEA NA Twitter feed about the release of the
HELCOM 2015 dataset via the MARiS website.
April 2016: MARiS was assigned key role in future Coordinated Research Project (CRP) by technical meeting of marine radioactivity experts at the
IAEA Environment Laboratories in Monaco. The meeting objective was to develop recommendations for a new CRP:
Levels, Trends and Radiological Effects
of Radionuclides in the Marine Environment. The experts agreed that MARiS should be used for managing the data required to undertake this new global
assessment of marine radioactivity, which follows similar undertakings published by IAEA in 1995 and 2005 (
MARDOS
and WOMARS respectively). Data
management activities would involve updating MARiS with the results of measurements relevant to the assessment period (2010 – 2015), which would
then be used for the for the production of text, maps, charts, tables and other data reduction products.
July 2015: MARiS was represented at the first RiO5 (Radioactivity in the Ocean, 5 decades later) Working Group
meeting at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, USA.
May 2015: Take the MARiS User Survey.
March 2015: MARiS poster presentation at the
23rd Session of the IOC Committee on International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange
(IODE-XXIII), Bruges, Belgium.
November 2014: MARiS poster presentation at the
2nd International Ocean Research Conference, Barcelona, Spain.