The Marine Information System

The IAEA's Marine Information System (MARiS) allows the search and recovery of more than 528,000 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.

• The map shows the global distribution of seawater measurements contained in MARiS.
• Status as of May 2019 (Total measurements: 528,063)

  Seawater	250,918
  Sediment	91,222
  Biota	181,207
  Suspended matter	4,716

Database Updates

May 2019: 140 new references have been added to the database totalling 323,431 new measurements that are now available through MARiS. Of these new references, 30 are new datasets that can be accessed via the "Data Provider" drop-down menu.
May 2019: HELCOM data is updated with the HELCOM 2018 database. 28,528 new measurements are now available through MARiS.
May 2017: HELCOM data updated with the HELCOM 2016 dataset. 2591 new measurements now available through MARiS.
May 2016: HELCOM data updated with the HELCOM 2015 dataset. 12209 new measurements now available through MARiS.
July 2015: 27065 new seawater measurements in the North Pacific from the public datasets released by MEXT, NRA and TEPCO.
May 2015: 2755 new seawater measurements released predominantly in the North Pacific covering the period 2008-2012.

MARiS Development

An upgrade to MARiS is currently in development. The objectives of the upgrade are to provide an improved user experience through easy to use and up to date data retrieval and mapping technologies, greater transparency regarding which datasets are available, and access to more extensive, richer datasets. In the meantime if you encounter any specific issues please contact the MARIS team. Thank you to those that completed the MARiS User Survey, the feedback is helping guide the MARiS development project.

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

February 2019: The MARiS database continued its involvement with the Coordinated Research Project on the Levels, Trends and Radiological Effects of Radionuclides in the Marine Environment and their use as Tracers for Oceanography Studies. The second Research Coordination Meeting was held at NAEL in Monaco.

March 2018: The MARiS database is now featured with a new introductory access page from the IAEA website.

March 2018: The MARiS database was featured in the AIR² Access to Infrastructures for Radiation Protection Research Bulletin . The article is available here.

August 2017: MARiS poster presentation at the Goldschmidt conference in Paris, France. Abstract available here.

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.