Climate forcing on estuarine zooplanktonic production

Estuaries are among the most valuable aquatic systems in the world and resolving how there are impacted by climate change is fundamental to their management under global change scenarios. In this study, a ten-year time series (2003-2013) of zooplankton in an estuarine area (Mondego estuary, Portugal) is used to determine the impact of climate variability on estuarine zooplanktonic secondary production. For that, a trend analysis of seasonal zooplankton production was applied and their link with large-scale, regional, and local environment was tested by Distance-based multivariate multiple regression (DistLM). The annual integrated production of zooplankton varied between 34.27 mg C m � 3 (2003) and 179.804 mg C m � 3 (2013). Results showed that estuarine and marine zooplanktonic production increased in the estuary, mostly during summer/autumn and spring/summer, respectively. Local and regional environmental forcing drove copepod production in the estuary, with large-scale regime shifts affecting both directly and indirectly.

Automated summary

Estuaries are valuable aquatic systems and understanding the impact of climate change on them is essential for their management. This study uses a ten-year time series data to analyze the effect of climate variability on estuarine zooplanktonic production. Results show that both estuarine and marine zooplanktonic production increased, driven by local and regional environmental factors, with large-scale regime shifts playing a role as well.