The coast and the shelf of the Black Sea have always been strategically important resources in many ways. Numerous seaside resorts of the Black Sea are widely known not only in Europe but also abroad and have been very popular tourist attraction in Eurasia. Many of them are world class resorts that can compete with western ones.

The Black Sea coast and its shelf are also important as an industrial area with developed (and growing) oil production and high level of cargo shipping. For example, Krasnodar territory, the only Russian region on the Black Sea, possesses vast resources of oil and gas and the production has been constantly growing in recent years. Here is also situated one of the biggest Russian seaports – Novorossiysk, which is the second largest oil terminal in the country and the main in the Russian Black Sea coast area.

Realizing the scale of anthropogenic influence in the region , group of partners has initiated the regular satellite monitoring of the Black Sea waters and the coastline, including main seaports of the Black Sea. Using the satellite monitoring data the project is aiming to solve two independent problems:

1. Monitoring of oil spills in the Black Sea;

2. Monitoring of ground surface deformations (with millimeter precision) in the areas of hight anthropogenic influence.

For both problems the same data set of satellite images is supposed to be used, which illustrates the idea of complex approach to Earth monitoring for studying crucial geo-ecological processes.

The project goals are:

1. providing the public, government and commercial organizations with up-to-date information on the ecological situations related to oil spills in the sea in order to take immediate actions aimed to prevent ecological disasters or to reduce the damage caused by accidents and prosecute those responsible;

2. promoting ideas of ecologically responsible business planning for building and oil production companies in order to avoid critical situations related to ground surface deformations.