Hydrological and physical characterization of Cinque Terre Marine Protected Area (Ligurian Sea) and evaluation of current velocity and direction by AUV navigation tracks

The integrated study, concerning the experimental observations, was performed during the oceanographic cruises on-board the two NURC research vessels, in the period between 2008 and 2010 in the Marine Protected Area of Cinque Terre (North-West Mediterranean Sea, Italy). The aim of the research is to describe the environmental features using both hydrological parameters and AUV navigation tracks, acquired respectively by a multi-parametric platform (MEDUSA) and AUV MUSCLE. The innovative contribution of this work is the possibility to evaluate the bottom stream without direct current measurements, but using the navigation data recorded by AUV. This work is a complementary analysis to environmental support of the ENI S.p.A. Exploration and Production Division project.