TY  - JOUR
A1  - Browning, Thomas J.
A1  - Liu, Xin
A1  - Zhang, Ruifeng
A1  - Wen, Zuozhu
A1  - Liu, Jing
A1  - Zhou, Yaqian
A1  - Xu, Feipeng
A1  - Cai, Yihua
A1  - Zhou, Kuanbo
A1  - Cao, Zhimian
A1  - Zhu, Yuanli
A1  - Shi, Dalin
A1  - Achterberg, Eric P.
A1  - Dai, Minhan
T1  - Nutrient co‐limitation in the subtropical Northwest Pacific
Y1  - 2021-08-17
VL  - 7
IS  - 1
SP  - 52
EP  - 61
JF  - Limnology and Oceanography Letters
DO  - 10.1002/lol2.10205
PB  - John Wiley & Sons
CY  - Inc.
N2  - Nutrients limiting phytoplankton growth in the ocean are a critical control on ocean productivity and can underpin predicted responses to climate change. The extensive western subtropical North Pacific is assumed to be under strong nitrogen limitation, but this is not well supported by experimental evidence. Here, we report the results of 14 factorial nitrogen–phosphorus–iron addition experiments through the Philippine Sea, which demonstrate a gradient from nitrogen limitation in the north to nitrogen–iron co‐limitation in the south. While nitrogen limited sites responded weakly to nutrient supply, co‐limited sites bloomed with up to ~60‐fold increases in chlorophyll a biomass that was dominated by initially undetectable diatoms. The transition in limiting nutrients and phytoplankton growth capacity was driven by a gradient in deep water nutrient supply, which was undetectable in surface concentration fields. We hypothesize that this large‐scale phytoplankton response gradient is both climate sensitive and potentially important for regulating the distribution of predatory fish.
UR  - http://resolver.sub.uni-goettingen.de/purl?gldocs-11858/9910
ER  -