Our first educational material is now available for download!

Apart from scientific work, in our project we try to bring the work we do closer to our oceanography students as well as to oceanographers and colleques from other scientific communities. We consider eduaction and dissemination of knowledge a worthy endeavor. Therefore, a lof of effort went into writting educational materials in the form of a textbook, two parts of which we have now decided to publish online.

The published text consist of two, out of three planned parts, which will together comprise a textbook on marine primary production, titled:

In this first part, titled Theory, we cover the basic theoretical underpinings of primary production models. The text consist of four chapters:

1. Photosynthesis irradiance functions

2. Primary production profile

3. Watercolumn production

4. Matrix model

Each chapter deals at length with the mathematical apparatus used in primary production models and highlights many details of such models. In the second part, titled Dynamics, we cover the basic dynamics of marine primary produciton and phytoplankton biomass, in relation to light mixing and sinking. The second part consists of four chapters:

1. Critical depth theory

2. Mixed layer dynamics

3. Biomass profile

4. Numerical simulations

The title of the third part is Observations, which is planned to be published online during the third and fourth project year.

Once finished, the textbook is intended to be used as educational material for students and early careers researchers in the oceanographic community. The aimed audience are students of physics that wish to learn a bit of ocean biology, as well as students of biology that wish to learn a bit of mathematical modelling, based on the approaches used in physics. 

Please feel free to share this webpage and to use these materials, either to learn, or to teach. We would greatley appriciate feedback in order to improve the text. Therefore, if you notice any errors in the text please write to the author at zkovac@pmfst.hr. Also, if you find this textbook useful write as well!

The text is available for download via the link below along with a Jupyter notebook containing a hands on excersise on how to build a simple primary production model.