Publication Date:
2022-05-25
Description:
Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2012. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Annual Reviews for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Annual Review of Marine Science 5 (2013):525-533, doi:10.1146/annurev-marine-121211-172331.
Description:
For more than a decade there has been controversy in oceanography regarding the
metabolic state of the oligotrophic gyres of the open sea. Here we review background on
this controversy, commenting on several issues to set the context for a moderated debate
between two groups of scientists. In a companion paper, Williams et al (2013) take the
view that the oligotrophic subtropical gyres of the global ocean exhibit a state of net
autotrophy, that is, the gross primary production (GPP) exceeds community respiration
(R), when averaged over some suitably extensive region and over a long duration. Duarte
et al (2013) take the opposite view, that the oligotrophic subtropical gyres are net
heterotrophic, with R exceeding the GPP. This idea -- that large, remote areas of the
upper ocean could be net heterotrophic raises of host of fundamental scientific questions
about the metabolic processes of photosynthesis and respiration that underlie ocean
ecology and global biogeochemistry. The question remains unresolved, in part, because
the net state is finely balanced between large opposing fluxes and most current
measurements have large uncertainties. This challenging question must be studied against
the background of large, anthropogenically-driven changes in ocean ecology and
biogeochemistry Current trends of anthropogenic change make it an urgent problem to
solve and also greatly complicate finding that solution.
Description:
The authors acknowledge support from the U.S. National Science Foundation through the
Center for Microbial Oceanography Research and Education (C-MORE), an NSF Science
and Technology Center (EF-0424599), and NSF award OPP 0823101 (Palmer LTER)
from the Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems Program.
Keywords:
Net heterotrophy
;
Net autotrophy
;
Net community production
;
Oligotrophic gyres
;
Oxygen
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Preprint
Format:
application/pdf
