Biogeochemical Processes in the Nansha Islands Waters

2 Distributions of Inorganic Nutrients in the Northern South China Sea 

The Nansha Islands waters, located in the SSCS, are under the influence of the East-Asian monsoon. It is an example of a coral reef environment that might 

The Nansha Islands waters are densely scattered with hundreds of islands, reef banks, and shoals. They are bounded by the oceanic sub-basins of the SCS (the central sub-basin and the southwest sub-basin) in the north, the Nansha Trough in the offshore northwest, Palawan to offshore northwest Borneo in the southeast, and neighbored with the Sunda Shelf (including west Borneo and southern peninsula of Indochina) in the southwest. The bathymetry changes 

Coral reefs are outstanding examples of marine ecosystems. Reefs embody a mixture of the minute and the grand, the ephemeral and the permanent, and the simple and the complex that we associate with the natural systems of this planet. 

In the 1970s and early 1980s, the misconception was widespread that the high productivity of coral reels was dependent upon rich nutrient sup -plies. However, it was also recognized latterly that coral reefs were dependent not only upon warm ocean waters, but also upon low-nutrient environments. Smith and Kinsey (1976) observed that the very marginal reefs in the eastern tropical Pacific (ETP) were exposed to no greater temperatme extremes 

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