Nitrate nutrient ocean

Over 20% of the world s open ocean surface waters are replete in light and major nutrients (nitrate, phosphate, and silicate), yet chlorophyll and productivity values remain low. These so-called "high-nitrate low-chlorophyll" or HNLC regimes (Chisholm and Morel, 1991) include the sub-arctic North Pacific (Martin and Fitzwater, 1988 Martin et al, 1989 Miller et al, 1991), the equatorial Pacific (Murray et al, 1994 Fitzwater et al, 1996) and the southern Ocean (Martin et al.,... 

The moles X/moles P in average plankton is given by a, and b is the surface water concentration in phosphorus free water (water stripped of nutrients). In the case of P itself the surface ocean concentration is close to zero, while the deep Pacific has a concentration of 2.5 pM. For N, the N/P ratio of plankton is 16 and the surface water concentration is 0 pM. The predicted deep sea nitrate is 40 pM. The ratio of (deep)/(surface) is greater than 10. For calcium the Ca/P of... 

Horizontal distributions of (a) 02(mLyL), (b) percent saturation of 02(%), (c) phosphate ( j,mol/L), (d) nitrate ( ji,mol/L), and (e) silicate ( ji,mol/L) at 4000 m depth in the worid s major ocean basins. The horizontal distribution of AOU was presented In Figure 8.2. Source After Conkright, M. E., et al. (2002). World Ocean Atlas 2001, Volume 4 Nutrients, NOAA Atlas NESDIS 52, U.S. Government Printing Office (See companion website for color version.)... 

Primary production in the ocean is controlled by major nutrients, such as nitrate and phosphate, but also by certain trace metals. Dissolved iron was hypothesized (over 50 years ago) to be a key nutrient limiting primary production rates in the sea. However, credible data for the concentration of dissolved iron in seawater have only become available in the last 8 years. Iron is present in surface seawater at concentrations less than 0.5 nanomole per kilogram. These low concentrations of dissolved iron suggest that it is, in fact, a nutrient that can limit primary production in the ocean (Martin et al., 1989). The role of iron in limiting productivity of the ocean can be resolved only when measurements of dissolved iron at concentrations below 1 nanomole per kilogram become routine. There is evidence that other trace metals could also control phytoplankton growth. 

An increase of C02 concentration in the atmosphere does not determine substantial fertilization of marine bioproductivity—but does lead to pH decrease. As temperature grows, C02 assimilation by the ocean decreases, but C02 emissions due to upwellings are reduced and the transport of excess carbon to deep layers of the ocean diminishes. The anthropogenically induced input of nutrients to the oceans through river run-off and deposition of atmospheric aerosols (especially nitrate and iron as elements of atmospheric aerosols) can affect bioproductivity. 

At 20 °C, K = 10 - and so water of pH=8.1 in equilibrium with atmospheric O2 (p02 — 0.21 atm) has pe = 12.5. This conforms to surface conditions, but the pe decreases as the O2 content diminishes with depth. The oxygen minimum is particularly well developed beneath the highly productive surface waters of the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, where there is a large flux of organic material to depth and subsequently considerable oxidation. The O2 becomes sufficiently depleted i.e., hypoxia) that the resulting low redox conditions causes NOs to be reduced to N02 - Aeolian transport of nitrate to Chesapeake Bay can lead to low O2 conditions. Similarly, intermittent hypoxia develops in parts of the Gulf of Mexico due to the riverine transport of nutrients derived from agricultural uses in the Mississippi catchment. 

Fig. 9. Dissolved inorganic carbon, salinity, phosphate, nitrate, and temperature in surface ocean waters, during the 1982-83 El Nino, at the same longitude as in Fig. 7. Note that the high values for CO2 and nutrients south from the equator have disappeared while the water temperature has become warmer as warm waters from the Western Pacific flooded over the region. Measurements by C. D. Keeling, R. F. Weiss and others.

Nitrification is the process whereby ammonium (NH4+) is oxidized to nitrite (N02 ) and then to nitrate (N03 ). It thus links the most oxidized and most reduced components of the nitrogen (N) redox cycle and helps determine the overall distributions of these important nutrients. Ammonium rarely occurs at significant concentrations in oxygenated habitats. It is recycled rapidly between heterotrophic and N2 fixing organisms (which excrete NH4+ directly or release organic N that is microbiaUy degraded to NH4+) and many heterotrophic and photosynthetic plankton (which utilize NH4+ as a N source) in the surface ocean. 

Nearly all quantitative estimates of open-ocean water column denitrification are based on some type of nitrate deficit calculation. In the Arabian Sea, Naqvi (1987) have used nutrient-potential temperature relationships to estimate a denitrification rate of 30 Tg/y. In a later study Naqvi and Shailaja (1993) arrived at a... 

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