scholarly journals Dispersion and Stratification Dynamics in the Upper Sacramento River Deep Water Ship Channel

Author(s):  
Leah Lenoch ◽  
◽  
Paul Stumpner ◽  
Jon Burau ◽  
Luke Loken ◽  
...  

Hydrodynamics control the movement of water and material within and among habitats, where time-scales of mixing can exert bottom-up regulatory effects on aquatic ecosystems through their influence on primary production. The San Francisco Estuary (estuary) is a low-productivity ecosystem, which is in part responsible for constraining higher trophic levels, including fishes. Many research and habitat-restoration efforts trying to increase primary production have been conducted, including, as described here, a whole-ecosystem nutrient addition experiment where calcium nitrate was applied in the Sacramento River Deep Water Ship Channel (DWSC) to see if phytoplankton production could be increased and exported out of the DWSC. As an integral part of this experiment, we investigated the physical mechanisms that control mixing, and how these mechanisms affect the strength and duration of thermal stratification, which we revealed as critical for controlling phytoplankton dynamics in the relatively turbid upper DWSC. Analysis of a suite of mixing mechanisms and time-scales show that both tidal currents and wind control mixing rates and stratification dynamics in the DWSC. Longitudinal and vertical dispersion increased during periods of high wind, during which wind speed influenced dispersion more than tidal currents. Thermal stratification developed most days, which slowed vertical mixing but was rapidly broken down by wind-induced mixing. Stratification rarely persisted for longer than 24 hours, limiting phytoplankton production in the study area. The interaction between physical mechanisms that control mixing rates, mediate stratification dynamics, and ultimately limit primary production in the DWSC may be useful in informing habitat restoration elsewhere in the Delta and in other turbid aquatic environments.

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (6) ◽  
pp. 11661-11687 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. M. Duarte ◽  
S. Agustí

Abstract. The dynamics of organic carbon production, release and bacterial use was examined across a range of communities spanning from highly oligotrophic ones in the Subtropical Atlantic Ocean, mesotrophic ones in the Mediterranean Sea and productive ones in the Northern African upwelling and the Southern Ocean. A comparative analysis of experiments examining total and particulate organic carbon production across a range of time scales (15 min to 24 h) for 20 communities with contrasting phytoplankton cell status, as assessed by cell lysis rates, and the use of a simple inverse model was used to resolve patterns of carbon flow in the microbial food web. Communities in productive ocean waters accumulated organic carbon over hourly time scales, whereas only a small fraction of net primary production accumulated in communities from oligotrophic waters. These communities supported high phytoplankton cell lysis rates leading to a rapid flux of organic carbon to bacteria, which had high affinity for phytoplankton-derived carbon, much of which was rapidly respired. Conventional assessments of primary production in the oligotrophic ocean severely underestimate net phytoplankton production, as carbon flow in microbial communities from oligotrophic ocean waters occurs within short (minutes) time scales. This explains difficulties to reconcile estimates of primary production with independent estimates of carbon use by bacteria in oligotrophic marine ecosystems.


2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (8) ◽  
pp. 1831-1848 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Nieves ◽  
Michael Spall

AbstractWe present a simplified theory using reduced-gravity equations for North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) and its variation driven by high-latitude deep-water formation. The theory approximates layer thickness on the eastern boundary with domain-averaged layer thickness and, in tandem with a mass conservation argument, retains fundamental physics for cross-equatorial flows on interannual and longer forcing time scales. Layer thickness anomalies are driven by a time-dependent northern boundary condition that imposes a southward volume flux representative of a variable source of NADW and damped by diapycnal mixing throughout the basin. Moreover, an outflowing southern boundary condition imposes a southward volume flux that generally differs from the volume flux at the northern boundary, giving rise to temporal storage of NADW within the Atlantic basin. Closed form analytic solutions for the amplitude and phase are provided when the variable source of NADW is sinusoidal. We provide a nondimensional analysis that demonstrates that solution behavior is primarily controlled by two parameters that characterize the meridional extent of the southern basin and the width of the basin relative to the equatorial deformation radius. Similar scaling applied to the time-lagged equations of Johnson and Marshall provides a clear connection to their results. Numerical simulations of reduced-gravity equations agree with analytic predictions in linear, turbulent, and diabatic regimes. The theory introduces a simple analytic framework for studying idealized buoyancy- and wind-driven cross-equatorial flows on interannual and longer time scales.


1971 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. W. Schindler ◽  
S. K. Holmgren

A modified 14C method is described for measuring phytoplankton production in low-carbonate waters. The procedure includes the use of the Arthur and Rigler (Limnol. Oceanogr. 12: 121–124, 1967) technique for determining filtration error, liquid scintillation counting for determining the radioactivity of membrane filters and stock 14C solutions, and gas chromatography for measuring total CO2.Primary production, chlorophyll a, and total CO2 were measured for two dates in midsummer from each of several lakes in the Experimental Lakes Area (ELA), ranging from 1 to 1000 ha in area and from 2 to 117 m in maximum depth. Phytoplankton species abundance and biomass were determined for the same dates. Production ranged from 0.02 to 2.12 gC/m3∙day and from 0.179 to 1.103 g C/m2∙day. Chlorophyll ranged from 0.4 to 44 mg/m3 and from 5 to 98 mg/m2 in the euphotic zone. The corresponding ranges for live phytoplankton biomass were 120–5400 mg/m3 and 2100–13,400 mg/m2. Chrysophyceae dominated the phytoplankton of most of the lakes.A system for classifying the lakes in terms of phytoplankton species composition and production–depth curves is developed.


2020 ◽  
Vol 496 (2) ◽  
pp. 1430-1444
Author(s):  
Ashwani Pandey ◽  
Alok C Gupta ◽  
G Damljanovic ◽  
P J Wiita ◽  
O Vince ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT We present the results of optical photometric observations of three extreme TeV blazars, 1ES 0229+200, 1ES 0414+009, and 1ES 2344+514, taken with two telescopes (1.3 m Devasthal Fast Optical Telescope, and 1.04 m Sampuranand Telescope) in India and two (1.4 m Milanković telescope and 60 cm Nedeljković telescope) in Serbia during 2013–2019. We investigated their flux and spectral variability on diverse time-scales. We examined a total of 36 intraday R-band light curves of these blazars for flux variations using the power-enhanced F-test and the nested ANOVA test. No significant intraday variation was detected on 35 nights, and during the one positive detection the amplitude of variability was only 2.26 per cent. On yearly time-scales, all three blazars showed clear flux variations in all optical wavebands. The weighted mean optical spectral index (αBR), calculated using B − R colour indices, for 1ES 0229+200 was 2.09 ± 0.01. We also estimated the weighted mean optical spectral indices of 0.67 ± 0.01 and 1.37 ± 0.01 for 1ES 0414+009, and 1ES 2344+514, respectively, by fitting a single power law (Fν ∝ ν−α) in their optical (VRI) spectral energy distributions. A bluer-when-brighter trend was only detected in the blazar 1ES 0414+009. We briefly discuss different possible physical mechanisms responsible for the observed flux and spectral changes in these blazars on diverse time-scales.


1984 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 591-604 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. E. Hecky ◽  
S. J. Guildford

The primary productivity of seven regions of Southern Indian Lake and neighboring Wood Lake was measured during open-water seasons from 1974 to 1978. The lake had regional differences in chlorophyll concentrations and daily rates of integral primary production in 1974 and 1975 prior to impoundment of the lake. Regions receiving Churchill River flow tended to have higher chlorophyll concentrations and production rates than those regions marginal to the flow. Impoundment of the lake resulted in higher efficiencies of primary production in all regions, as indicated by higher light-saturated rates of carbon uptake per unit chlorophyll and by higher initial slopes of the hyperbolic light response relation of the phytoplankton. Many large basins of the lake had light penetration reduced by high concentrations of suspended sediment from eroding shorelines, while other areas had relatively unchanged light penetration. The increased efficiency of carbon fixation per unit chlorophyll resulted in higher rates of integral production in those regions where light penetration was not greatly affected. Daily rates of integral primary production in lake regions where light penetration had decreased markedly were not significantly different after impoundment because efficiencies of light utilization were higher. Comparison of the mean water column light intensities for those turbid regions with the values of Ik (light intensity at the onset of light saturation) for phytoplankton indicated that these turbid regions are now light deficient on average. Phosphorus deficiency, as indicated by alkaline phosphatase activity per unit ATP, which was present before impoundment, has been eliminated as the mean water column light intensity declined below 5 mEinsteins∙m−2∙min−1. The light environment of a new reservoir can be a significant determinant of integral production, and predicting the consequences of impoundment on phytoplankton production requires accurate prediction of the light environment.


1984 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 273 ◽  
Author(s):  
JC Andrews ◽  
WC Dunlap ◽  
NF Bellamy

Temperatures were measured in a small lagoon in the windward reef flat of Davies Reef in the central Great Barrier Reef and examined on three time scales to gain three perspectives on thermal stratification and the trapping of bottom water. Profiling for stratification and dye revealed layering where bottom water was trapped and released by the successive capping and uncapping of the lagoon by a diurnal thermocline. A 1-month monitoring array revealed a solar synchronization, with the temperature of reef-flat water exceeding temperatures of lagoon water by up to 1 5�C within 1 h of midday, and lagoon stratification lagging this by 1 h. There was also a lunar synchronization with mixing proceeding during nocturnal rising tides. Lagoon surface and bottom temperatures were also monitored for 11 months. The amplitude of the diurnal stratification showed no coherence either with the amplitude of the tide (marked spring-neap tides) or with scalar wind stress. The low frequency amplitude of the diurnal oscillation was coherent with the longshore wind vector at periods near 3 6 days and in a band approximately from 10 to 40 days. Daily stratification increased when winds were poleward and decreased when winds were equatonvard. Events of flushing were separated on average by 9 h, but the most frequently observed separation was 5 h and only 10% of separations exceeded 18 h during the 11 months.


1977 ◽  
Vol 34 (12) ◽  
pp. 2271-2279 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ray T. Oglesby

Fish yield is related to annual primary production, summer phytoplankton standing crop, and the morphoedaphic index for lakes representing a wide variety of typologies by a series of models in the form of log-log regressions. Tentative boundary conditions are established by which lakes inappropriate to the models can be excluded. Confidence intervals for predicted values about the mean are given for the fish yield–phytoplankton standing crop regression. From this relation, potential yields for the lakes studied are reduced from a range of 10,000 to one of 25-fold. Efficiencies with which carbon is transferred from primary production to fish yield vary by 2 to 3 orders of magnitude and are highest for small, intensively managed ponds and lowest for large, deep, cold-water lakes. Models based upon fish yield as a function of phytoplankton production or standing crop are inherently more accurate and subject to fewer exceptions than are those related to morphoedaphic factors. The former appear to be capable of substantial refinement but even in their present state might be employed to make useful predictions for groups of lakes. A suggested supplement to existing approaches in fishery management involves the following sequence: (1) use of expectation-variability diagrams to obtain an overview of the problem, (2) selection of an appropriate model or models to predict yield, (3) prediction of a range of yields, and (4) implementation of regulations proved successful for other lakes in the same yield category. Key words: fish, lakes, phytoplankton, morphoedaphic index, fishery management


1988 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 731-737 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harold E. Welch ◽  
John K. Jorgenson ◽  
Martin F. Curtis

Chironomid emergence was quantified in four small lakes at Saqvaqjuac, N.W.T. (63°39′N), before and after lake fertilization. Emerging biomass responded immediately to increased phytoplankton production, reaching equilibrium the following year. Emergence from the reference lake was extremely variable, for no apparent reason. The emergence – phytoplankton production relationships found by Davies for the Experimental Lakes Area (~49°N) were generally valid for Saqvaqjuac lakes and Char Lake (74°42′), except that (1) biomass was better correlated than numbers because of increased mean size with increasing latitude and (2) total primary production was a better predictor than phytoplankton production alone because benthic photosynthesis increases with increasing latitude. Chironomid production seems to be a predictable function of total primary production throughout the latitudinal range of the small Canadian lakes examined.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document