During the last few years theoretical works have shed new light and proposed new hypotheses on the mechanisms which regulate the spatio-temporal behaviour of phytoplankton communities in marine pelagic ecosystems. Despite this, relevant physical and biological issues, such as effects of the time-dependent mixing in the upper layer, competition between groups, and dynamics of non-stationary deep chlorophyll maxima, are still open questions. In this work, we analyze the spatio-temporal behaviour of five phytoplankton populations in a real marine ecosystem by using a one-dimensional reaction-diffusion-taxis model. The study is performed, taking into account the seasonal variations of environmental variables, such as light intensity, thickness of upper mixed layer and profiles of vertical turbulent diffusivity, obtained starting from experimental findings. Theoretical distributions of phytoplankton cell concentration was converted in chlorophyll concentration, and compared with the experimental profiles measured in a site of the Tyrrhenian Sea at four different times (seasons) of the year, during four different oceanographic cruises. As a result we find a good agreement between theoretical and experimental distributions of chlorophyll concentration. In particular, theoretical results reveal that the seasonal changes of environmental variables play a key role in the phytoplankton distribution and determine the properties of the deep chlorophyll maximum. This study could be extended to other marine ecosystems to predict future changes in the phytoplankton biomass due to global warming, in view of devising strategies to prevent the decline of the primary production and the consequent decrease of fish species.
Dipartimento di Fisica e Chimica, Università di Palermo, Group of Interdisciplinary Theoretical Physics and Consorzio Nazionale Interuniversitario per le Scienze Fisiche della Materia, Unità di Palermo, Palermo, Italy;Dipartimento di Fisica e Chimica, Università di Palermo, Group of Interdisciplinary Theoretical Physics and Consorzio Nazionale Interuniversitario per le Scienze Fisiche della Materia, Unità di Palermo, Palermo, Italy;Dipartimento di Fisica e Chimica, Università di Palermo, Group of Interdisciplinary Theoretical Physics and Consorzio Nazionale Interuniversitario per le Scienze Fisiche della Materia, Unità di Palermo, Palermo, Italy;Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Catania, Catania, Italy;Radiophysics Department, Lobachevsky State University, Nizhniy Novgorod, Russia;Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Naples, Italy;Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Naples, Italy
Recommended Citation:
Davide Valenti,Giovanni Denaro,Bernardo Spagnolo,et al. How Diffusivity, Thermocline and Incident Light Intensity Modulate the Dynamics of Deep Chlorophyll Maximum in Tyrrhenian Sea[J]. PLOS ONE,2015-01-01,10(1)