News
New publication
We have just published A new global dataset of photosynthesis parameters in Earth System Science Data. The paper was co-authored by Žarko Kovač, Marija Bačeković Koloper, Shubha Sathyendranath, Gemma Kulk, Heather Bouman and Leon Ćatipović, and was selected as a Highlight Paper by the journal.
Marine phytoplankton use sunlight to turn dissolved inorganic carbon into organic matter, supporting marine food webs and contributing to the global carbon cycle. To estimate how much carbon phytoplankton fix, models need to account for how efficiently they photosynthesise in low light and how fast they can photosynthesise when light is abundant. These properties are difficult to measure at sea and remain poorly sampled in many parts of the ocean.
In this study, we revisited an archive of 6,084 primary production profiles collected at sea. Using inverse modelling, we worked backwards from measurements of carbon fixation at different depths, taking into account the total daily production measured across the water column. This allowed us to estimate 3,776 pairs of photosynthesis parameters from observations collected between 1960 and 2017.
The new dataset fills gaps in earlier compilations, particularly in the North Pacific, the eastern equatorial Pacific and the Indian Ocean. It provides an openly available resource for improving satellite-based estimates of marine primary production and for investigating how phytoplankton photosynthesis varies across ocean regions and over time.
The front page of the paper is shown below:
The paper is available through this link.
