Modelling a phytoplankton dichotomy in the eastern Subarctic Pacific : subtitle impact of atmospheric variability, iron surface flux, and life cycle dynamics of the calanoid copepods, Neocalanus spp. ...

• Main Author: Jeffery, Nicole
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: University of British Columbia 2009
• Subjects: Subarctic; Copepods
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0052465; https://doi.library.ubc.ca/10.14288/1.0052465

The vertically resolved, process-based, numerical model presented in this work serves to critique a planktonic paradigm of the eastern subarctic Pacific. The modelled phytoplankton consists of a small (< 10 μm) size fraction of low-iron-adapted phytoplankton grazed by microzooplankton and the iron-stressed > 20 μm diatoms grazed by ontogenetic mesozooplankton migrants, primarily large calanoid copepods of Neocalanus spp. Two approaches are used to include the effects of iron limitation: in the first, an iron dependence is implicit in diatom growth rate parameters and, in the second, diatom growth is an explicit function of bioavailable soluble iron concentration whose dynamic evolution is defined by a partial differential equation. A new copepod life cycle model (LCM) is presented which couples dynamically to the ecosystem model, thus, incorporating population migration patterns and weight and maturity distributions in the omnivorous "predation closures" of the micro-plankton equations. As an ...