Effects of phytoplankton community on production, size, and export of large aggregates: A world‐ocean analysis

By L. Guidi, L. Stemmann, G. Jackson, F. Ibañez, H. Claustre, L. Legendre, M. Picheral, Gabriel Gorskya. 2009

301 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We recorded vertical profiles of size distributions of large particles (<100 µm) to a 1000‐m depth in the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans and in the Mediterranean Sea with the Underwater Video Profiler. Of the 410 profiles used in our analysis, 193 also included temperature, salinity, and high‐performance liquid chromatography (HPLC)‐resolved pigments, which were used to characterize the size structure of the phytoplankton community. Classification analysis identified six clusters of vertical profiles of size distributions of particles. Each cluster was characterized by the size distribution of its particles in the mesopelagic layer and the change of the particle‐size distribution with depth. Clusters with large particles in the mesopelagic layer corresponded to surface waters dominated by microphytoplankton, and those with small particles corresponded to surface waters dominated by picophytoplankton. We estimated the mass flux at 400 m using a relationship between particle size and mass flux. Principal‐component regression analysis showed that 68% of the variance of the mass flux at 400 m was explained by the size structure of the phytoplankton community and integrated chlorophyll a in the euphotic zone. We found that coefficient k in the Martin power relationship, which describes the decrease in the vertical mass flux with depth, varies between 0.2 and 1.0 in the world ocean, and we provided an empirical relationship to derive k from the size structure of phytoplankton biomass in the euphotic zone. Biogeochemists and modelers could use that relationship to obtain a realistic description of the downward particle flux instead of using a constant k value as often done.

Subfields: Oceanography

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b687224cfc599260a6d086f0a9ca0c9519175a91

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In Oceanography

Citations in the corpus

Dimensions of marine phytoplankton diversity (2019, background): “…the biogeochemistry of the ocean (e.g. Cermeño et al., 2008; Fuhrman, 2009), including the export of organic matter to the deep ocean (Falkowski et al., 1998; Guidi et al., 2009), which is critical in oceanic carbon sequestration and contributes to modulation of atmospheric CO2 levels and climate.”
Assessing phytoplankton community composition from hyperspectral measurements of phytoplankton absorption coefficient and remote-sensing reflectance in open-ocean environments (2015, background): “…Cermeño, Estévez-Blanco, Marañon, & Fernandez, 2005; Uitz, Huot, Bruyant, Babin, & Claustre, 2008), the transfer of primary production to higher trophic levels (e.g., Margalef, 1965; Kiørboe, 1993), and the export of carbon to the deep oceans (e.g., Legendre & Le Fevre, 1995; Guidi et al., 2009).”
Mesopelagic zone ecology and biogeochemistry - a synthesis (2010, background): “The UVP produces vertical profiles of the size distribution of large particles, and so allows the determination of the decrease in the vertical mass flux with depth (Guidi et al., 2009).”
The relative importance of phytoplankton aggregates and zooplankton fecal pellets to carbon export: insights from free-drifting sediment trap deployments in naturally iron-fertilised waters near the Kerguelen Plateau (2014, background): “…decreased by more than 3 orders of magnitude for a 1 order of magnitude increase in size (0.008–0.07 cm), leading to slopes values around −3, and therefore in the range expected for particle size distribution (PSD) in natural waters (−2 to −5; Buonassissi and Dierssen, 2010; Guidi et al., 2009).”