Improving the knowledge about dissolved oxygen and chlorophyll variability at ESTOC by using autonomous vehicles.

The European Station for Time Series in the Ocean, Canary Islands “ESTOC” is located in the Eastern Subtropical North Atlantic Gyre (29'10ºN, 15'30ºW). ESTOC started operations in 1994 based on a monthly ship-based sampling, in addition to hydrographic and sediment trap moorings. Since 2002, ESTOC is part of the European network for deep sea ocean observatories through several projects, among others ANIMATE (Atlantic Network of Interdisciplinary Moorings and Time-series for Europe), EuroSITES (European Ocean Observatory Network) and Fixed point Open Ocean Observatory network (FixO3). The main purpose of these projects was to improve the time-resolution of the biogeochemical measurements through moored biogeochemical sensors. Additionally, ESTOC is included in the Marine-Maritime observational network of the Macaronesian region, which is supported by the European overseas territories programs since 2009. This network aims to increase the quantity and quality of marine environmental observations. The goal is to understand phenomena which impact in the environment, and consequently at the socio-economy of the region to attempt their prediction. With this purpose, ESTOC has included the use of autonomous vehicles “glider” in order to increase the observational resolution and, by comparison with the parallel observational programs, to study the biogeochemical processes at different time scale resolutions. This study investigates the time variability of the dissolved oxygen and chlorophyll distributions in the water column focusing on the diel cycle, looking at the relevance of this variability in the already known seasonal distributions. Our interest is assessing net community production and remineralization rates through the use of oxygen variations, establishing the relationship between the DO anomalies values and those from the chlorophyll distribution in the water column.