Using UVP in-situ imaging to estimate the impact of environmental drivers and intermediate particle maxima on vertical particle fluxes
durch
8A-002 - Hörsaal Ostufer / Lecture Hall East
GEOMAR - Standort Ostufer / GEOMAR - East Shore
The biological carbon pump (BCP) is a crucial mechanism for sequestering atmospheric carbon, reducing the impact of anthropogenic emissions. Within the BCP, marine particles transport carbon to the deep ocean. However, historically it was a very time-consuming effort to study particle transport over the entire water column in all detail. Now, in-situ imaging devices such as the Underwater Vision Profiler (UVP) allow for analysis of particle distribution in high spatial resolution. In our work, we use a large published UVP dataset with global information on particle size, abundance, distribution and biovolume which we match with environmental data from several other data sources.
With these data we analyze the influence of temperature, oxygen and pH as environmental drivers on three traditionally used organic flux attenuation measures, Martin b, remineralization depth, and transfer efficiency. However, we do not find a simple relationship between environmental drivers and attenuation metrics in this data set. To uncover more complex patterns, we apply unsupervised clustering to the environmental data and relate the resulting clusters to the attenuation metrics, to reveal geographic patterns of environmental influence. Additionally, we observe that many vertical particle flux profiles deviate from traditional power law attenuation curve shapes, often featuring intermediate particle maxima (IPM), making metrics like Martin b less applicable. We map the global distribution of IPM, categorize them by intensity, and find they are widespread, particularly abundant in coastal regions and around the equator.
FB2-Office