Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Optimizing models for remotely estimating primary production in Antarctic coastal waters

Optimizing models for remotely estimating primary production in Antarctic coastal waters Primary productivity and associated biogeochemical fluxes within the Southern Ocean are globally significant, sensitive to change and poorly known compared to temperate marine ecosystems. We present seasonal time series data of chlorophyll a, primary productivity and in-water irradiance measured in the coastal waters of the Western Antarctica Peninsula and build upon existing models to provide a more optimum parameterization for the estimation of primary productivity in Antarctic coastal waters. These and other data provide strong evidence that bio-optical characteristics and phytoplankton productivity in Antarctic waters are different from temperate waters. For these waters we show that over 60% of the variability in primary production can be explained by the surface chlorophyll a concentration alone, a characteristic, which lends itself to remote sensing models. If chlorophyll a concentrations are accurately determined, then the largest source of error (13–18%) results from estimates of the photoadaptive variable (PBopt). Further, the overall magnitude of PBopt is low (median 1.09 mg C mg chl−1 h−1) for these data compared to other regions and generally fits that expected for a cold water system. However, the variability of PBopt over the course of a season (0.4 to 3 mg C mg chl−1 h−1) is not consistently correlated with other possible environmental parameters, such as chlorophyll, sea surface temperature, incident irradiance, day length, salinity, or taxonomic composition. Nonetheless, by tuning a standard depth-integrated primary productivity model to fit representative PBopt values and the relatively uniform chlorophyll-normalized production profile found in these waters, we can improve the model to account for approximately 72–73% variability in primary production both for our data as well as for independent historic Antarctic data. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Antarctic Science Cambridge University Press

Optimizing models for remotely estimating primary production in Antarctic coastal waters

Antarctic Science , Volume 12 (1): 13 – May 6, 2004
Download PDF
13 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/cambridge-university-press/optimizing-models-for-remotely-estimating-primary-production-in-qBD848flEE

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Copyright
© Antarctic Science Ltd 2000
ISSN
1365-2079
eISSN
0954-1020
DOI
10.1017/S0954102000000043
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Primary productivity and associated biogeochemical fluxes within the Southern Ocean are globally significant, sensitive to change and poorly known compared to temperate marine ecosystems. We present seasonal time series data of chlorophyll a, primary productivity and in-water irradiance measured in the coastal waters of the Western Antarctica Peninsula and build upon existing models to provide a more optimum parameterization for the estimation of primary productivity in Antarctic coastal waters. These and other data provide strong evidence that bio-optical characteristics and phytoplankton productivity in Antarctic waters are different from temperate waters. For these waters we show that over 60% of the variability in primary production can be explained by the surface chlorophyll a concentration alone, a characteristic, which lends itself to remote sensing models. If chlorophyll a concentrations are accurately determined, then the largest source of error (13–18%) results from estimates of the photoadaptive variable (PBopt). Further, the overall magnitude of PBopt is low (median 1.09 mg C mg chl−1 h−1) for these data compared to other regions and generally fits that expected for a cold water system. However, the variability of PBopt over the course of a season (0.4 to 3 mg C mg chl−1 h−1) is not consistently correlated with other possible environmental parameters, such as chlorophyll, sea surface temperature, incident irradiance, day length, salinity, or taxonomic composition. Nonetheless, by tuning a standard depth-integrated primary productivity model to fit representative PBopt values and the relatively uniform chlorophyll-normalized production profile found in these waters, we can improve the model to account for approximately 72–73% variability in primary production both for our data as well as for independent historic Antarctic data.

Journal

Antarctic Science – Cambridge University Press

Published: May 6, 2004

Keywords: Antarctic Peninsula; bio-optical model; Palmer LTER; primary production; SeaWiFS; Southern Ocean

There are no references for this article.