The plankton that inhabits the approximately 100 m surface of the ocean are responsible for half of the photosynthesis on planet Earth.
The net production of the community (measured at significant spatial and temporal scales) summarizes the metabolic state of an ecosystem and determines its potential to maintain food webs, essential for the sustainability of fisheries, and to contribute to CO2 fluxes, ultimately influencing the global climate.
The remote and vast central regions of the great oceans, characterized by their low production (oligotrophic), occupy together approximately half of the Earth’s surface, constituting the largest biome on the planet. Given their extent and importance for global productivity and CO2 sequestration, the metabolic state of these regions is a matter of enormous significance in biological oceanography.
The collaboration over more than a decade between a group of researchers from the University of Vigo, led by Pablo Serret, and experts from the Plymouth Marine Laboratory and the University of East Anglia (UK), resulted in a unique database of measurements of photosynthesis, respiration, and NCP in the surface layer of the ocean. These data were obtained during the “Atlantic Meridional Transect” oceanographic campaigns (http://www.amt-uk.org), which crossed the Atlantic from the United Kingdom to Patagonia (50ºN–50ºS) annually from 2000 to 2012, aboard the British vessels RRS James Clark Ross, Discovery, and James Cook.
In parallel to this large-scale research work, and also with the aim of contributing to the study of the metabolic balance of the ocean, there is the SCALAR project (Scaling, monitoring and predicting mariñar plankton metabolism in a changing ocean). This project, funded by MINECO and directed by Pablo Serret, in collaboration with the Physical Oceanography Group of the University of Vigo (GOFUVI), is working on the determination of metabolic balances in the Ría. Using the facilities available at ECIMAT, a time series of measurements has been carried out in the Ría de Vigo in recent years, using different methodological approaches.
More information https://oceanoecimat.wordpress.com/2015/05/12/interaccion-entre-el-metabolismo-planctonico-y-el-clima-global/
