U.S. flag An official website of the United States government.
Official websites use .gov

A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS

A lock ( ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

i

Controls on Water-Column Respiration Rates in a Coastal Plain Estuary: Insights from Long-Term Time-Series Measurements



Details

  • Journal Title:
    Estuaries and Coasts
  • Personal Author:
  • NOAA Program & Office:
    Sea Grant
  • Sea Grant Program:
    MDU (Maryland Sea Grant)
  • Description:
    Rates of ecosystem metabolic properties, such as plankton community respiration, can be used as an assessment of the eutrophication state of a waterbody and are the primary biogeochemical rates causing oxygen depletion in coastal waters. However, given the additional labor involved in measuring biogeochemical rate processes, few monitoring programs regularly measure these properties, and thus, few long-term monitoring records of plankton respiration exist. An 8-year, biweekly plankton community respiration rate time series was analyzed as part of a monitoring program situated in the lower Patuxent River estuary, a tributary of Chesapeake Bay. We found that particulate nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus) were the most highly correlated covariates with respiration rate. Additionally, statistical and kinetic models including variables both water temperature and particulate nitrogen were able to explain 74% of the variability in respiration. Over the long-term record, both particulate nutrients and respiration rate were elevated when measured at higher tides. Separate measurements of respiration rate during 10 consecutive days and during high and low tide on three separate days also support the enhancement of respiration with high tide. The enhancement was likely due to the import of particulate nutrients from the highly productive mid-bay region. This analysis of the longest consistently measured community respiration rate dataset in Chesapeake Bay has implications for how to interpret long-term records of measurements made at fixed locations in estuaries.
  • Keywords:
  • Source:
    Estuaries and Coasts 47, 2542–2551 (2024)
  • DOI:
  • Format:
    PDF
  • Document Type:
    Journal Article
  • Place as Subject:
    Chesapeake Bay (Md. and Va.)
  • Rights Information:
    Accepted Manuscript
  • Compliance:
    Submitted
  • Main Document Checksum:
    urn:sha-512:f8669840d2e8667394ac95ae57334c1b19ca85e87c6c4b772dba7979ba5d1a9ee7004ab61eb2cdb6b388f4425c42059de23b645a8de8f7dea4cead6a64466a6a
  • Download URL:
  • File Type:
    Filetype[PDF - 992.04 KB ]
PREVIOUS
ON THIS PAGE
Details
The NOAA IR serves as an archival repository of NOAA-published products including scientific findings, journal articles, guidelines, recommendations, or other information authored or co-authored by NOAA or funded partners. As a repository, the NOAA IR retains documents in their original published format to ensure public access to scientific information.
BACK TO TOP