The distribution of nutrients and chlorophyll in the northern East China Sea during the spring and summer

Abstract

In order to study changes in the marine ecosystem of the East China Sea derived by the global warming and construction of the Three Gorges Dam in the middle of the Changjiang, temperature, salinity, nutrients, and chlorophyll-a were studied intensively in the northern part of the East China Sea during the summer of 2003 and spring of 2004. According to the previous studies, the upweling of the Kuroshio Current and the Changjiang resulted in a major inputs of nutrients in the East China Sea, but these two inputs may not contribute greatly to a build up of nutrients in the northern East China Sea. In spring, relatively high concentrations of nitrates and phosphates were observed in the western part of the study area, which resulted from the supply of high concentrations of nutrients showing up in the surface waters as a result of vertical mixing from the ocean bottom. The concentrations of nitrates and phosphates observed in summer were lower than those in spring, since the surface waters were well stratified by the larger discharge of fresh water from the Changjiang in summer. The surface nitrate/phosphate ratios ranged from 1.3 to 16 in spring and from 1.1 to 15 in summer and were lower than the Redfield ratio of 16, indicating that the growth of phytoplankton is limited by nitrogen. This results are contrary to the previous results, in which the growth of phytoplankton was limited by phosphate in the East China Sea. The reason for this contrary result is that most nutrients in the surface waters are supplied by vertical mixing from the bottom waters with low nitrate/phosphate ratios, not directly influenced by the Changjiang with high nitrate/phosphate ratios. The depth-integrated chlorophyll observed in summer was similar to the previous results, but those measured in spring were almost twice as high as those found in previous results. The depth-integrated chlorophyll in spring was higher than that of summer, which results from high concentrations of nitrates and phosphates in the surface waters in spring due to active vertical mixing.