Icecolors '93 : Biological Weighting Function for the Ultraviolet Inhibition of Carbon Fixation in a Natural Antarctic Phytoplankton Community

Abstract

The goals of the Icecolors 1993 expedition were (1) to develop a space/time climatology of incident and penetrating spectral irradiance for the southern oceans, (2) to quantify the ultraviolet (UV) dependency of primary production for pelagic and substrate-associated antarctic phytoplankton communities, and (3) to determine the UV inhibition effects on key target sites. The study was conducted at Palmer Station, Antarctica, prior to the opening of the ozone `hole` and during the onset of depletion of ozone, the most severe ever recorded over the Antarctic Peninsula. This paper discusses results from an experiment designed to estimate a biological weight function for primary production inhibition in Antarctic phytoplankton under natural irradiance. The newly derived function is presented and it is shown that the sensitivity of in situ phytoplankton to ambient UV-B at the end of winter was greater than that measured under artificial light conditions for temperate marine phytoplankton and terrestrial plants. 18 refs., 3 figs.