Plankton patchiness investigated using simultaneous nitrate and chlorophyll observations
| Autor: | Simon Jan van Gennip, John T. Allen, Rosalind Pidcock, Mark C. Stinchcombe, Meric Srokosz, Adrian Martin, Stuart C. Painter |
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| Rok vydání: | 2016 |
| Předmět: |
010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences
010505 oceanography Mesoscale meteorology Pelagic zone Plankton Oceanography 01 natural sciences chemistry.chemical_compound Geophysics chemistry Nitrate Space and Planetary Science Geochemistry and Petrology Chlorophyll Phytoplankton Earth and Planetary Sciences (miscellaneous) Environmental science 0105 earth and related environmental sciences |
| Zdroj: | Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans. 121:4149-4156 |
| ISSN: | 2169-9275 |
| Popis: | The complex patterns observed in marine phytoplankton distributions arise from the interplay of biological and physical processes, but the nature of the balance remains uncertain centuries after the first observations. Previous observations have shown a consistent trend of decreasing variability with decreasing length-scale. Influenced by similar scaling found for the properties of the water that the phytoplankton inhabit, ‘universal' theories have been proposed that simultaneously explain the variability seen from meters to hundreds of kilometers. However, data on the distribution of phytoplankton alone has proved insufficient to differentiate between the many causal mechanisms that have been suggested. Here we present novel observations from a cruise in the North Atlantic in which fluorescence (proxy for phytoplankton), nitrate and temperature were measured simultaneously at scales from 10 m to 100 km for the first time in the open ocean. These show a change in spectra between the small scale (10–100 m) and the mesoscale (10–100 km) which is different for the three tracers. We discuss these observations in relation to the current theories for phytoplankton patchiness. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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