What are the characteristics of the ocean ecosystem?
What are the characteristics of the ocean ecosystem?
Marine ecosystems are characterized by factors such as availability of light, food and nutrients. Other factors that affect marine ecosystems include water temperature, depth and salinity, as well as local topography. Changes in these conditions can change the composition of species that make up the marine community.
Which part of the ocean ecosystem that contains the greatest species diversity?
coral reefs
How does global climate change most directly impact marine life?
The ocean absorbs most of the excess heat from greenhouse gas emissions, leading to rising ocean temperatures. Increasing ocean temperatures affect marine species and ecosystems. Rising temperatures cause coral bleaching and the loss of breeding grounds for marine fishes and mammals.
What impact does climate change have on marine ecosystems?
Climate change is likely to alter patterns of wind and water circulation in the ocean environment. Such changes may influence the vertical movement of ocean waters (i.e., upwelling and downwelling), increasing or decreasing the availability of essential nutrients and oxygen to marine organisms.
How does climate change affect our weather?
Climate change influences severe weather by causing longer droughts and higher temperatures in some regions and more intense deluges in others, say climate experts. Climate change affects some weather, but experts caution against blaming it for every extreme event.
How does a phytoplankton bloom develop?
More generally, a bloom can be considered as a phytoplankton population explosion-blooms occur when sunlight and nutrients are readily available to the plants, and they grow and reproduce to a point where they are so dense that their presence changes the color of the water in which they live.
How are the colors of a phytoplankton bloom determined?
Different shades of the phytoplankton bloom depend on the types of species and the density of the phytoplankton population inside the bloom. Ocean color chlorophyll data is used to determine the net primary productivity (NPP) For example, a milky white color indicates the presence of coccolithophores.
What season does phytoplankton bloom?
spring bloom
How do you control phytoplankton blooms?
Some animals help limit or reduce phytoplankton populations by feeding on them. Filter-feeding oysters, scallops and sponges consume phytoplankton as they circulate seawater through their bodies, while microscopic crustaceans like copepods graze on phytoplankton in the water column.
What is the main factor that initiates the spring phytoplankton bloom?
According to CDH, the start of the phytoplankton spring bloom corresponds to shoaling of the ocean mixed layer depth (hereafter ) above a critical depth (hereafter ), a threshold based on solar radiation, light attenuation in the water column and algal losses from various sources (Smetacek and Passow, 1990).
How does phytoplankton bloom affect the hydrosphere?
Phytoplankton cause mass mortality in other ways. In the aftermath of a massive bloom, dead phytoplankton sink to the ocean or lake floor. The bacteria that decompose the phytoplankton deplete the oxygen in the water, suffocating animal life; the result is a dead zone.
How can phytoplankton result in a public health risk?
The primary diseases associated with marine phytoplankton result from eating toxin-contaminated seafood (primarily shellfish). In addition to these diseases, human exposure to blooms of HAB organism may result in other health complaints.
Is phytoplankton a Heterotroph?
Phytoplankton (or algae) are the “plants” of the open ocean. Zooplankton are heterotrophs that get their energy from feeding on phytoplankton, bacteria, other zooplankton, or even non-living material in the ocean. Zooplankton include single-celled protists (that are sometimes referred to as microzooplankton).