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CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research
Past Seminars

Seminar Abstract

Oceanic carbon uptake depends on the primary productivity
of the marine ecosystem

The dependence of primary productivity in the ocean on the spatial and temporal variability of the nutrient flux, and the functional form used to parameterise it, will be discussed. We show that primary productivity is significantly affected by the form of the nutrient flux. For restoring nutrient flux, used to parameterize nutrient input by upwelling, primary productivity strongly depends on the size and/or temporal duration of upwelling events.

We also show that High-Nutrient Low-Chlorophyll (HNLC) regions can easily appear when the nutrient input is in the fixed-flux form, without necessarily implying the lack of some micronutrient. We believe these results can have interesting implications for the interpretation of primary productivity estimates from observational data and ocean circulation models, and we suggest a way to obtain upper and lower bounds to primary productivity in coarse-resolution models.

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CSIRO = Marine Laboratories Auditorium, Castray Esplanade, Hobart

For further information, or to schedule a seminar, contact:
Peter Oke, (Oceanographic seminars) CSIRO Marine Research (03) 6232 5387
Piers Dunstan, (Biological seminars) CSIRO Marine Research (03) 6232 5382
Katrina Nitschke, Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems CRC (03) 6226 2265 & IASOS, University of Tasmania (03) 6226 2509