What is the Integrated Marine Observing System?
Australia's Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS) has been operating a wide range of observing equipment throughout Australia’s coastal and open oceans since 2006. IMOS makes all of its data openly and freely accessible to the marine and climate science community, other stakeholders and users, and international collaborators.
Australia's Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS) is enabled by the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS). It is operated by a consortium of institutions as an unincorporated joint venture, with the University of Tasmania as Lead Agent.
Principal Participants
University of Tasmania (Lead Agent) ∙ Australian Institute of Marine Science ∙ Bureau of Meteorology ∙ CSIRO ∙ Sydney Institute of Marine Science (encompassing the University of New South Wales, The University of Sydney, Macquarie University and University of Technology Sydney) ∙ University of Western Australia ∙ South Australian Research and Development Institute
Associate Participants
How does IMOS work?
IMOS is designed to be a fully-integrated, national system, observing at ocean-basin and regional scales, and covering physical, chemical and biological variables.
IMOS Facilities, operated by eight different institutions within the National Innovation System, are funded to deploy equipment and deliver data streams for use by the entire Australian marine and climate science community and its international collaborators.
IMOS observations are guided by science planning undertaken collaboratively across the Nodes of the Australian marine and climate science community with input from government, industry and other stakeholders. There are five major research themes that unify IMOS science plans and related observations:
Long-term ocean change ∙ Climate variability & extremes ∙ Boundary currents ∙ Continental shelf & coastal processes ∙ Ecosystem responses
Facilities and Observations
Data Access
IMOS observations are turned into data that can be discovered, accessed, downloaded, used and reused in perpetuity by our data Facility: the Australian Ocean Data Network.
