Effects of large-scale advection and small-scale turbulent diffusion on vertical phytoplankton dynamics

Turbulence has been recognized as a factor of paramount importance for the survival or extinction of sinking phytoplankton species. However, dealing with its multiscale nature in models of coupled fluid and biological dynamics is a formidable challenge. Advection by coherent structures, such as those related to winter convection and Langmuir circulation, is also recognized to play a role in the survival and localization of phytoplankton. In this work we revisit a theoretically appealing model for phytoplankton vertical dynamics, and numerically investigate how large-scale fluid motions affect the survival conditions and the spatial distribution of the biological population. For this purpose, and to work with realistic parameter values, we adopt a kinematic flow field to account for the different spatial and temporal scales of turbulent motions. The dynamics of the population density are described by an advection-reaction-diffusion model with a spatially heterogeneous growth term proportional to sunlight availability. We explore the role of fluid transport by progressively increasing the complexity of the flow in terms of spatial and temporal scales. We find that, due to the large-scale circulation, phytoplankton accumulates in downwelling regions and its growth is reduced, confirming previous indications in slightly different conditions. We then explain the observed phenomenology in terms of a plankton filament model. Moreover, by contrasting the results in our different flow cases, we show that the large-scale coherent structures have an overwhelming importance. Indeed, we find that smaller-scale motions only quite weakly affect the dynamics, without altering the general mechanism identified. Such results are relevant for parametrizations in numerical models of phytoplankton life cycles in realistic oceanic flow conditions.

Automated summary

Turbulence plays a key role in the survival or extinction of sinking phytoplankton species, while large-scale fluid motions are found to significantly affect the survival conditions and spatial distribution of the biological population. The study highlights the overwhelming importance of large-scale coherent structures in the dynamics of phytoplankton populations.