Allometric scaling of estuarine ecosystem metabolism.

ABSTRACT: There are still significant uncertainties in the magnitude and direction of carbon fluxes through coastal ecosystems. An important component of these biogeochemical budgets is ecosystem metabolism, the net result of organismal metabolic processes within an ecosystem. In this paper, I present a synthesis of published ecosystem metabolism studies from coastal ecosystems and describe an empirical observation that size-dependent patterns in aquatic gross primary production and community respiration exist across a wide range of coastal geomorphologies. Ecosystem metabolism scales to the 3/4 power with volume in deeper estuaries dominated by pelagic primary production and nearly linearly with area in shallow estuaries dominated by benthic primary production. These results can be explained by app

SUBMITTER: Nidzieko NJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6042108 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature