Advances in Earth Science ›› 2015, Vol. 30 ›› Issue (3): 385-395. doi: 10.11867/j.issn.1001-8166.2015.03.0385

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Review on Planktonic Ecosystem and Its Control on Biological Pump in the Marginal Seas

Bangqin Huang( ), Xin Liu   

  1. Key Laboratory of Coastal and Wetland Ecosystems, Ministry of Education,Fujian Provincial Key Laboratory of Coastal Ecology and Environmental Studies, College of the Environment and Ecology, Xiamen University, Xiamen
  • Online:2015-04-08 Published:2015-03-20

Bangqin Huang, Xin Liu. Review on Planktonic Ecosystem and Its Control on Biological Pump in the Marginal Seas[J]. Advances in Earth Science, 2015, 30(3): 385-395.

Biological pump study, coupling with carbon biogeochemical cycle is the hot issue of current global change research. Marginal sea is an important component of the world's oceans, playing key roles in the regulations of nutrient cycling and energy flow, as well as climate regulation, which makes it the hotspot of studies on marine ecosystems and biogeochemistry. Based on the scientific question of “how planktonic community structure regulates biological pump efficiency in the marginal seas”, this review paper described the roles that main biological components of planktonic ecosystem play in regulating both biological pump (that is particulate organic carbon (POC) export) and carbon flow, and summarized progresses that have been made so far as well as problems remain in the field. The idea of most previous studies is to take the whole planktonic ecosystem as a black box, focusing on only parts of the ecosystem (e.g. physical processes, biological production, community structure and so on) to deduce the relationships between these dynamics and efficiency of biological pump. Recent studies also indicated that how planktonic ecosystem regulates biological pump was not simple or linear as the process of how carbon flow among different components within the ecosystem acts on POC export are very complex. In order to address the current issues, we come up with the idea that takes the whole planktonic ecosystem as a unit, investigating community composition, biomass, as well as key carbon transfer conversion rates among different trophic levels. We aim to reveal key processes influencing the efficiency of biological pump, and establish the coupling models of carbon flow and POC export for different planktonic ecosystems, and thus eventually explain how planktonic community regulates biological pump efficiency in the marginal seas.

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