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Oxygen budgets and productivity estimates in the Strait of Georgia from a continuous ferry-based monitoring system

University of British Columbia

The oxygen budget in the top 50 m of lower Strait of Georgia, British Columbia is investigated using high resolution measurements of dissolved oxygen concentration and other oceanographic and meteorological properties from an instrumented ferry. An budget equation is established to describe the oxygen balance in the surface Strait of Georgia. The budget equation consists of 4 parts, which includes (1) the storage rate term, which is calculated with the ferry oxygen measurements using a 2-point differential scheme; (2) advective and vertical transport, which is estimated using a box model; (3) air-sea gas transfer, which is estimated using a bulk parametrization of air-sea gas flux; and (4) net community productivity, which is estimated by taking the residual of the budget equation. To further investigate the productivity level in the Strait of Georgia, daily community respiration rate is estimated by extracting the diurnal variation signal of oxygen, and gross productivity is estimated by combining net community productivity with the community respiration rate. Results suggest that gross productivity in the lower Strait of Georgia varies from 1.4 to 11.8 gC.m-²day-¹ and averages at 4.4 gC.m-²day-¹, slightly higher than historical measurements.

Text

2015-03-17

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/52405

Oceanography

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ca/