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Journal of Plankton Research, Vol 21, 1643-1658, Copyright © 1999 by Oxford University Press

ORIGINAL ARTICLES

Identifying the dominant process (physical versus biological) in pelagic marine ecosystems from field estimates of chlorophyll a and phytoplankton production

L Legendre, F Rassoulzadegan and J Michaud
Département de biologie, Université Laval, Québec, QC G1K 7P4, Canada; Station Zoologique, BP 28, F-06230 Villefranche-sur-Mer, France

A new approach is described to identify the dominant process (physical versus biological) in a pelagic marine ecosystem, from simple biological oceanographic field variables. The approach is based on quantification of the matching (M) between phytoplankton production (P) and losses, from field estimates of chlorophyll a(Chl) and P. Coefficient M is estimated for a wide range of oceanic and coastal environments and of trophic characteristics, using dat from the literature. Results show that M characterizes the dominance of physical versus biological processes in pelagic systems. The coefficient may be especially useful as a means for extracting process information on pelagic marine ecosystems from large data sets of Chl and P, e.g. recorded by moored instruments or provided by satellite images of ocean colour.
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