Overview
Created in 2008, LIENSs is a multidisciplinary CNRS joint research unit based at La Rochelle University (France), focusing on coastal environments and societal interactions. In particular, the unit brings together expertise in oceanography, geodesy, and environmental sciences to study coastal dynamics. A key area of research at LIENSs involves understanding how sea levels have changed along coastlines over the past decades to centuries, and how the land itself moves over time.
To this end, a strong observational component has been developed, centred on data from coastal tide gauges and GNSS stations. This component is known as SONEL (www.sonel.org), which serves as the global GNSS data assembly centre of the Global Sea Level Observing System (GLOSS) under IOC/UNESCO. SONEL collects, quality-controls and distributes GNSS data and metadata from permanent coastal stations around the world.
In parallel, an IGS-associated (International GNSS Service) analysis centre known as “ULR” has been established, aiming to provide refined vertical land motion estimates with the highest possible accuracy, commensurate with the precision obtained for sea level trends from tide gauges.
As part of the Copernicus In Situ TAC, the LIENSs team is responsible for implementing an operational GNSS processing chain (building on the research-based “ULR” analysis centre) to produce accurate vertical land motion estimates. These estimates will be used to correct the Copernicus sea level MY datasets from tide gauges that are co-located with a GNSS stations for which measurements are available.
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