Oxygen Balance and Net Ecosystem Production in a Florida Subtropical Estuary

Lauren Elise Seidensticker1, Raymond Najjar1, Maria Herrmann1, Joseph N Boyer2, W. Michael Kemp3, Daniel J Tomaso1 and Henry Briceno2, (1)Pennsylvania State University, Meteorology, University Park, PA, United States, (2)Florida International University, Southeast Environmental Research Center, Miami, FL, United States, (3)University of Maryland, Horn Point Laboratory, Cambridge, MD, United States
Abstract:
A dissolved oxygen budget was constructed from oxygen concentration measurements in Biscayne Bay, Florida with monthly time resolution from 1996 to 2009 in order to estimate net ecosystem production (NEP). Averaged over the Bay, oxygen air-water exchange and NEP approximately balanced each other, while the other budget terms, including riverine input and exchange with the ocean, were negligibly small. The average NEP for the whole time series was found to be -15 mol O2 m-2 yr-1, indicating net heterotrophy, though the bay shifted from net heterotrophy to net autotrophy after the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season. NEP also exhibited a mean annual cycle in which net heterotrophy in the fall was 3 times greater than it was during the spring. The seasonality exhibited in the annual cycle suggests that NEP is anticorrelated with temperature, river discharge, and the nutrient concentration.
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