PARENT SESSION
Contributed Oral Session 76: Estuary and Coastal Management
Wednesday, August 10, 8:00 AM - 11:30 AM, Meeting Room 514 A, Level 5, Palais des congrès de Montréal

Mining a sea of data: finding order in the ocean by looking for ecosystem transitions.

Irwin, Andrew^*,1, Finkel, Zoe ², Falkowski, Paul², ¹ Mount Allison University, Sackville, NB, Canada² Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA

ABSTRACT- The ocean shows enormous spatial and temporal variation in the distribution of chlorophyll biomass and rates of primary production. Using a combination of satellite-derived chlorophyll and temperature, climatological nutrient fields, and modeled mixed layer depths and currents, we look for global and robust thresholds in the interrelationships among these variables. The statistical approach extracts non-linear response functions from these data with few a priori assumptions. Our analysis shows clear thresholds in chlorophyll as a function of nutrient availability, light, and temperature as well as a variety of correlated variables. We obtain ecological functional relationships, which are quite different from physiological response functions, and use them to define ecosystem transitions.

Key words: chlorophyll, remote-sensing, generalized additive models, ecosystem transitions