A multidisciplinary project carried out within the MAST framework. MATER combined physical and ecological modelling with intensive field activity carried out in the three sub–basins of the Mediterranean Sea that show a progressive eastward gradient of oligotrophy. The project objectives were:

to study and quantify the triggering and controlling transfer processes of mass (water, particles, natural and anthropogenic, stable and radioactive elements) and energy between the different compartments (land-sea, sea-atmosphere, upper-deep waters, water-sediment, living-nonliving, pelagos-benthos) in contrasting environments (from eutrophic to oligotrophic);

to appraise the time and space scales of the phenomena, in identified structures of the Mediterranean system; and

to investigate the ecosystem response to these transfers.