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Currie & Roff 2006
Currie, W.J.S. and Roff, J.C. (2006). Plankton are not passive tracers: Plankton in a turbulent environment. Journal of Geophysical Research 111: doi: 10.1029/2005JC002967. issn: 0148-0227.

Spectral analysis was performed on a series of oceanographic transects collected using an optical plankton counter and conductivity-temperature-depth probe. The "physical" time series (i.e., temperature) power spectra showed a single passive scaling relationship across the entire range of sampling scales (1--8192 s) that was expected from turbulence. However, the "biological" time series possessed more than one scaling region. The Chl a fluorescence had three scaling regions, a flattened (whitened) intermediate range bound by passive regions at scales approximately 300 s. Cross-spectral analysis indicated that the chlorophyll-temperature spectra were similar at these scales. The zooplankton biomass had a single break in the power spectrum and was passive only at scales >300 s, the zooplankton-temperature spectra being similar only at these scales. The zooplankton-chlorophyll cross-spectra were often negatively coupled at the intermediate (300--30 s) scale giving a strong indication that zooplankton grazing was affecting the phytoplankton distributions.

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Abstract

Keywords
Oceanography, Biological and Chemical, Zooplankton, Paleoceanography, Atmospheric transport and circulation, Oceanography, Physical, Turbulence, diffusion, and mixing processes
Journal
Journal of Geophysical Research
http://www.agu.org/journals/jb/
Publisher
American Geophysical Union
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