The Influence of Short-Term Events on the Hydrographic and Biological Structure of the Southwestern Ross Sea
Relative to the rest of the Southern Ocean, the Ross Sea continental shelf experiences very high productivity and phytoplankton biomass, which supports an extensive food web including high concentrations of upper trophic level biomass. Conventional observational methods, including ship-based samplin...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Text |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
W&M ScholarWorks
2015
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539617963 https://doi.org/10.25773/v5-2n1c-ge47 https://scholarworks.wm.edu/context/etd/article/3093/viewcontent/10632147.pdf |
| Summary: | Relative to the rest of the Southern Ocean, the Ross Sea continental shelf experiences very high productivity and phytoplankton biomass, which supports an extensive food web including high concentrations of upper trophic level biomass. Conventional observational methods, including ship-based sampling, instrumented moorings, satellite imagery, and computer-based modelling, have illustrated the seasonal progression of the phytoplankton bloom over the past four decades. While we have been sampling phytoplankton variability in the Ross Sea on a variety of relatively large scales, with observations at specific locations or times, over spans of time, or at specific depths, our understanding of smaller scales of variability (on the order of a few hours or several kilometers) is still poor. Utilizing two seasons (2010-2011 and 2012-2013) of high-resolution autonomous glider deployments in the southwestern Ross Sea, I examined the mechanisms driving both the transitions between stages of the phytoplankton bloom and the short-term perturbations in average 0-50 m chlorophyll. By including the available raw fluorescence data from both glider seasons and three mooring seasons, I determined that the 2012-2013 season had greater than average variability, with greater levels of variability observed in only two other seasons. Differences in the timing of bloom transitions were relatively constrained; the transition from bloom to post-bloom levels occurred within a temporal span of 6 d. These findings were likely the result of the location of the 2012-2013 glider adjacent to Ross Island and the Ross Ice Shelf, where complex bathymetry, turbulent flows, and the presence of an ice field contributed to the greater observed variability. To investigate the mechanisms driving the short-term perturbations in chlorophyll, I examined the relationships between average chlorophyll, average temperature, and mixed layer depth measured by the gliders and wind speed measured by two automatic weather stations atop the Ross Ice Shelf. Over the ... |
|---|