On Regulation of Primary Production by Physical Processes The Ocean: Two Case Studies

Abstract

Interactions between the physical environment of the ocean and biology have been recognized since the early days of oceanography. In fact, deep ocean expeditions used to be multidisciplinary in character, and it was recognized that biological provinces and the physical environment were related on the large scale. This association has been extended to the scales of fronts and isolated eddies. This effort, largely descriptive in nature, has only begun to touch on the interaction between the physical and biological dynamics. Two case studies will be presented which deal with coupled physical and biological dynamics of phytoplankton and primary production. The first deals with lightlimiting conditions and the effect of vertical oscillatory motion. The second considers nutrient-limited conditions in a warm-core ring which is slowly decaying due to friction. Both case studies suggest that patchiness will develop on scales determined by the physical environment and illustrate the importance of internal gravity waves and oceanic eddies to phytoplankton dynamics.

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Contribution No. 6409