Journal
PROGRESS IN OCEANOGRAPHY
Volume 189, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.pocean.2020.102470
Keywords
South China Sea; Shelf sea; Primary production; Seasonal variation; Remote sensing; Coastal margin; River-dominated ocean margin; Ocean provinces; Colored dissolved organic matter; Turbidity front; Isobath; Inherent optical properties; Photosynthetic parameters
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Funding
- National Key R&D Program of China [2016YFA0601201]
- National Basic Research Program of China [2015CB954002, 2009CB421203]
- NSFC-Joint Fund to Promote Cross-Straits Scientific and Technological Cooperation [U1805241]
- NSFC [40730846, 42006112]
- NSFC Open Research Cruise [NORC2011-02]
- China Postdoctoral Science Foundation [2017M612127]
- National Postdoctoral Program for Innovative Talents [BX20190185]
- Outstanding Postdoctoral Scholarship, State Key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Science, Xiamen University
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Seasonal patterns of phytoplankton biomass and primary production (PP) are important features characterizing a marine ecosystem. The South China Sea (SCS) has been arbitrarily illustrated as an ecosystem with low PP in summer and high PP in winter. However, there is an emerging consensus about a lack of unity of PP seasonality in the SCS even in the northern SCS shelf-sea. Through analysis of the distributions of the remotely sensed colored dissolved organic matter absorption coefficient, a river-dominated ocean margin in the northern SCS (NSCS-RiOMar) with the 50 m isobath as its southeastern boundary has been defined. The difference in PP seasonality between the NSCS-RiOMar and the whole shelf-sea was evaluated by both the measured and the remotely sensed depth-integrated primary production (Sigma PP). A diagnostic analysis found that euphotic depth and a function of the half-saturation light intensity accounted for the seasonal variation of Sigma PP in the NSCS-RiOMar. Accordingly, the Platt and Sathyendranath (1993) model plus the nearest neighbor method and the semi analytical estimates of euphotic depth were used to compute the remotely sensed Sigma PP. The average Sigma PP in the NSCS-RiOMar were 1146.4, 1604.7, 979.5, and 891.3 mg C m(-2) d(-1) in spring, summer, autumn, and winter, respectively, contrasted with small seasonal variations in the whole shelf-sea. The unimodal EPP peak was in June-July in accordance with the peak of Pearl River discharge. This result was striking because previous remote sensing studies all showed the reversed seasonal pattern of EPP in both the NSCS-RiOMar and the whole shelf sea. The annual PP was estimated to be 33.5 +/- 2.3 Mt C yr(-1) and 56.2 +/- 3.2 Mt C yr(-1) in the NSCS-RiOMar and the whole shelf-sea, respectively. The nutrients inputted by the China Coastal Current might account for 4-23% of EPP in the NSCS-RiOMar between December and February.
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