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Research Objectives:
Our primary goal is to quantify, examine, model, and validate the complex interactions involving the direct, indirect, and feedback effects that regulate the planktonic food web in the coastal waters of the Southern Ocean in order to find the causes of low phytoplankton biomass and production there despite the plentiful availability of nutrients. In particular, we will evaluate the feedback mechanisms induced through the role of ammonium, which is largely released by aggregations of herbivorous zooplankton (krill specifically) present in the Southern Ocean, on the resistance to ultraviolet stress by the phytoplanktonic community and, in particular, the effects on nitrogen incorporation rates, both ammonium and nitrate, and the subsequent development of phytoplankton blooms.
We will not only address the problem experimentally, but will also consider the context of the heterogeneous landscape, dominated by small parcels of water, where these complex interactions occur. This project will be conducted through a shore-based (at the Spanish station Juan Carlos I) operation in 2004 and a subsequent cruise (on the R/V Hesperides) in 2005.
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