Decadal changes in hydrographic and ecological time-series in the Balearic Sea (western Mediterranean) identifying links between climate and zooplankton
We investigated possible relationships between climate, hydrography, and zooplankton abundance in the Balearic Sea (BS), during a 10-year survey period spanning January 1994 to December 2003. It was demonstrated that large-scale atmospheric variability in the North Atlantic (NA) Ocean acts as a driv...
| Published in: | ICES Journal of Marine Science |
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| Main Authors: | , |
| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Centro Oceanográfico de Baleares
2008
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10508/7629 https://doi.org/10.1093/icesjms/fsn017 |
| Summary: | We investigated possible relationships between climate, hydrography, and zooplankton abundance in the Balearic Sea (BS), during a 10-year survey period spanning January 1994 to December 2003. It was demonstrated that large-scale atmospheric variability in the North Atlantic (NA) Ocean acts as a driver of regional meteorological variations and hydrographic patterns in the BS. The results also revealed that the variability of copepods, appendicularians, cladocerans, siphonophores, doliolids, and ostracods is closely related to variations in water temperature recorded during strong anomalies of the NA climate (>1 s.d.). Although the time-series that we analysed cover a period that is relatively short for investigating climate effects on marine ecosystems, the statistical results reported were consistent enough to emphasize the NA’s climate effect on the BS. The cascade of links identified by these results should be considered and integrated into the assessment and modelling studies of pelagic ecosystem and biogeochemical fluxes in the western Mediterranean Sea 2 |
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