1,720,985 research outputs found
Sink or swim: the fate of particulate organic carbon in the interior ocean
No full textWithout small oceanic organisms atmospheric CO2 levels would be about 200 ppm higher than they are today; phytoplankton convert dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) to particulate organic carbon (POC) during photosynthesis, influencing the air-sea exchange of CO2. Eventually some of this POC is exported out of the upper ocean, often as either phytodetrital aggregates or zooplankton faecal pellets. Because of the complexity of this biological carbon pump (BCP), the fate of the exported POC in the mesopelagic zone is difficult to predict. To make things more complex all of these processes vary temporally and spatially. Marine snow catchers (MSCs) were used to analyse fast and slow sinking particles separately, which is a unique approach as slow sinking POC fluxes arenot often quantified. To investigate what controls the fate of particles in the upper mesopelagic zone (50 - 500 m) particles were collected from three contrasting oceanic regions: the Southern Ocean (SO), Equatorial Tropical North Pacific (ETNP) oxygen minimum zone (OMZ) and the temperate North Atlantic. In all sampling areas the slow sinking POC flux was as large if not larger than the fast sinking POC flux. This emphasises the importance of slow sinking particles in the upper mesopelagic zone.The main outcome from this thesis is the importance of the role of zooplankton in BCP processes. For instance the efficiency which particles were exported from the mixed layer varied inversely with primary production in the SO, and was likely due to the zooplankton grazing down the phytoplankton. When extending the data to include the ETNP and the North Atlantic this relationship still held,conflicting the long-standing theory that as primary production increases export efficiency increases.In the ETNP oxygen minimum zone a high proportion of exported POC sank through the mesopelagic zone. Microbial oxygen uptake incubations showed for the first time that fast sinking particles are turned over significantly slower than slow sinking particles (0.13 d?1 and 5 d?1 respectively). Microbial degradation of POC could explain most of the fast sinking POC attenuation with depth,with the remainder lost due to abiotic fragmentation. Therefore it is likely that zooplankton degradation of particles is reduced in OMZs as their abundance and metabolism are lowered. This reduces the overall remineralistion of POC, hence a higher fraction of POC is transferred to depth in OMZs. Phytoplankton lipid biomarkers dominated lipid particle composition throughout the upper mesopelagic zone in the ETNP, further emphasising the minor role of zooplankton in OMZs.Comparing the observations with an ecosystem model output at all three oceanic sites further emphasised the importance of zooplankton in the BCP. The model poorly parameterises zooplankton processing of particles and thus the observations and model matched best in the ETNP, where zooplankton processing of particles is naturally low.Changes in climate will effect the abundance and distribution of these small organisms. Further understanding of how zooplankton community structure andmetabolism may change in the future will be important to predict how atmosphericCO2 levels may change.<br/
Role of zooplankton in determining the efficiency of the biological carbon pump
No full textThe efficiency of the ocean’s biological carbon pump (BCPeff – here the product of particle export and transfer efficiencies) plays a key role in the air-sea partitioning of CO2. Despite its importance in the global carbon cycle, the biological processes that control BCPeff are poorly known. We investigate the potential role that zooplankton play in the biological carbon pump using both in situ observations and model output. Observed and modelled estimates of fast, slow and total sinking fluxes are presented from three oceanic sites: the Atlantic sector of the Southern Ocean, the temperate North Atlantic and the equatorial Pacific oxygen minimum zone (OMZ). We find that observed particle export efficiency is inversely related to primary production likely due to zooplankton grazing, in direct contrast to the model estimates. The model and observations show strongest agreement in remineralization coefficients and BCPeff at the OMZ site where zooplankton processing of particles in the mesopelagic zone is thought to be low. As the model has limited representation of zooplankton-mediated remineralization processes, we suggest that these results point to the importance of zooplankton in setting BCPeff, including particle grazing and fragmentation, and the effect of diel vertical migration. We suggest that improving parameterizations of zooplankton processes may increase the fidelity of biogeochemical model estimates of the biological carbon pump. Future changes in climate such as the expansion of OMZs may decrease the role of zooplankton in the biological carbon pump globally, hence increasing its efficiency
The Sensitivity of Subsurface Microbes to Ocean Warming Accentuates Future Declines in Particulate Carbon Export
Get PDFUnder future warming Earth System Models (ESMs) project a decrease in the magnitude of downward particulate organic carbon (POC) export, suggesting the potential for carbon storage in the deep ocean will be reduced. Projections of POC export can also be quantified using an alternative physiologically-based approach, the Metabolic Theory of Ecology (MTE). MTE employs an activation energy (Ea) describing organismal metabolic sensitivity to temperature change, but does not consider changes in ocean chemistry or physics. Many ESMs incorporate temperature dependent functions, where rates (e.g., respiration) scale with temperature. Temperature sensitivity describes how temperature dependence varies across metabolic rates or species. ESMs acknowledge temperature sensitivity between rates (e.g., between heterotrophic and autotropic processes), but due to a lack of empirical data cannot parameterize for variation within rates, such as differences within species or biogeochemical provinces. Here we investigate how varying temperature sensitivity affects heterotrophic microbial respiration and hence future POC export. Using satellite-derived data and ESM temperature projections we applied microbial MTE, with varying temperature sensitivity, to estimates of global POC export. In line with observations from polar regions and the deep ocean we imposed an elevated temperature sensitivity (Ea = 1.0 eV) to cooler regions; firstly to the Southern Ocean (south of 40°S) and secondly where temperature at 100 m depth <13°C. Elsewhere in both these scenarios Ea was set to 0.7 eV (moderate sensitivity/classic MTE). Imposing high temperature sensitivity in cool regions resulted in projected declines in export of 17 ± 1% (< 40°S) and 23 ± 1% (< 13°C) by 2100 relative to the present day. Hence varying microbial temperature sensitivity resulted in at least 2-fold greater declines in POC export than suggested by classic MTE derived in this study (12 ± 1%, Ea = 0.7 eV globally) or ESMs (1–12%). The sparse observational data currently available suggests metabolic temperature sensitivity of organisms likely differs depending on the oceanic province they reside in. We advocate temperature sensitivity to be incorporated in biogeochemical models to improve projections of future carbon export, which could be currently underestimating the change in future POC export
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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