The transport of nitrate into the euphotic zone is an important regulator of primary production. This transport is facilitated by physical processes that involve the depth and the steepness of the nitracline, but transport is complicated by the dynamical nature of the euphotic zone. Here we derive an analytical model that predicts two optical effects of the euphotic zone on the nitracline: the nitracline depth should vary inversely with light attenuation for downwelling irradiance, and the nitracline steepness should be directly proportional to light attenuation. We show that observations of nitrate and Secchi depth, which have been obtained over 21 yr in the coastal upwelling region off Southern California (CalCOFI area), are consistent with these predictions. Chlorophyll a measurements also indicate an optical signature in the nitracline: while the amount of chlorophyll correlated poorly with the nitracline depth, the nitracline depth correlated strongly with the optical effect of chlorophyll, and the nonlinear nature of this relationship was consistent with the model prediction. These optical effects on the nitracline may involve positive feedback mechanisms with phytoplankton production that have implications for interpretation and modeling of primary production. © 2007, by the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography, Inc.

Model representations of plankton structure and dynamics have consequences for a broad spectrum of ocean processes. Here we focus on the representation of zooplankton and their grazing dynamics in such models. It remains unclear whether phytoplankton community composition, growth rates, and spatial patterns in plankton ecosystem models are especially sensitive to the specific means of representing zooplankton grazing. We conduct a series of numerical experiments that explicitly address this question. We focus our study on the form of the functional response to changes in prey density, including the formulation of a grazing refuge. We use a contemporary biogeochemical model based on continuum size-structured organization, including phytoplankton diversity, coupled to a physical model of the California Current System. This region is of particular interest because it exhibits strong spatial gradients. We find that small changes in grazing refuge formulation across a range of plausible functional forms drive fundamental differences in spatial patterns of plankton concentrations, species richness, pathways of grazing fluxes, and underlying seasonal cycles. An explicit grazing refuge, with refuge prey concentration dependent on grazers' body size, using allometric scaling, is likely to provide more coherent plankton ecosystem dynamics compared to classic formulations or size-independent threshold refugia. We recommend that future plankton ecosystem models pay particular attention to the grazing formulation and implement a threshold refuge incorporating size-dependence, and we call for a new suite of experimental grazing studies.

The variability of the California Current System (CCS) is primarily driven by variability in regional wind forcing. In particular, the timing of the spring transition, i.e., the onset of upwelling-favorable winds, varies considerably in the CCS with changes in the North Pacific Gyre Oscillation. Using a coupled physical-biogeochemical model, this study examines the sensitivity of the ecosystem functioning in the CCS to a lead or lag in the spring transition. An early spring transition results in an increased vertical nutrient flux at the coast, with the largest ecosystem consequences, both in relative amplitude and persistence, hundreds of kilometers offshore and at the highest trophic level of the modeled food web. A budget analysis reveals that the propagation of the perturbation offshore and up the food web is driven by remineralization and grazing/predation involving both large and small plankton species.

Understanding the effects of climate change on planktonic ecosystems requires the synthesis of large, diverse data sets of variables that often interact in nonlinear ways. One fruitful approach to this synthesis is the use of numerical models. Here, we describe how models have been used to gain understanding of the physical-biological couplings leading to decadal changes in the southern California Current ecosystem. Moving from basin scales to local scales, we show how atmospheric, physical oceanographic, and biological dynamics interact to create long-term fluctuations in the dynamics of the California Current ecosystem. © 2013 by The Oceanography Society. All rights reserved.

The California Current System is an eastern boundary upwelling system (EBUS) with high biological production along the coast. Oligotrophic offshore waters create cross-shore gradients of biological and physical properties, which are affected by intense mesoscale eddy activity. The influence of eddies on ecosystem dynamics in EBUS is still in debate. To elucidate the mechanisms that influence the dynamics of ecosystems trapped in eddies, and the relative contribution of horizontal and vertical advection in determining local production, we analyze a particular cyclonic eddy using Lagrangian particle-tracking analyses of numerical Eulerian. The eddy formed in a coastal upwelling system; coastal waters trapped in the eddy enabled it to leave the upwelling region with high concentrations of plankton and nutrients. The ecosystem was initially driven mainly by recycling of biological material. As the eddy moved offshore, production in its core was enhanced compared to eddy exterior waters through Ekman pumping of nitrate from below the euphotic zone; this Ekman pumping was particularly effective due to the shallow nitracline in the eddy compared to eddy exterior waters. Both eddy trapping and Ekman pumping helped to isolate and maintain the ecosystem productivity in the eddy core. This study shows the importance of cyclonic eddies for biological production in EBUS: they contribute both to the redistribution of the coastal upwelling ecosystem and are local regions of enhanced new production. Together, these processes impact cross-shore gradients of important biological properties.

The California Current System (CCS) is an eastern boundary upwelling system characterized by strong eddies that are often generated at the coast. These eddies contribute to intense, long-distance cross-shelf transport of upwelled water with enhanced biological activity. However, the mechanisms of formation of such coastal eddies, and more importantly their capacity to trap and transport tracers, are poorly understood. Their unpredictability and strong dynamics leave us with an incomplete picture of the physical and biological processes at work, their effects on coastal export, lateral water exchange among eddies and their surrounding waters, and how long and how far these eddies remain coherent structures. Focusing our analysis on the southern part of the CCS, we find a predominance of cyclonic eddies, with a 25-km radius and a SSH amplitude of 6 cm. They are formed near shore and travel slightly northwest offshore for ~ 190 days at ~ 2 km day−1. We then study one particular, representative cyclonic eddy using a combined Lagrangian and Eulerian numerical approach to characterize its kinematics. Formed near shore, this eddy trapped a core made up of ~ 67% California Current waters and ~ 33% California Undercurrent waters. This core was surrounded by other waters while the eddy detached from the coast, leaving the oldest waters at the eddy’s core and the younger waters toward the edge. The eddy traveled several months as a coherent structure, with only limited lateral exchange within the eddy.