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Deep-Sea Research II 52 (2005) 1–4
www.elsevier.com/locate/dsr2
Editorial
US GLOBEC biological and physical studies of plankton, fish
and higher trophic level production, distribution, and
variability in the northeast Pacific
Investigations in the US GLOBEC (GLOBal
Ocean ECosystems Dynamics) Northeast Pacific
(NEP) program began in 1997 to investigate how
large-scale climate change and shorter-term variability impacts the productivity of coastal marine
ecosystems, the distributions and abundances of
plankton, and the important fishery resources that
rely on these ecosystems for at least a part of their
life history. The NEP was selected as a region of
study for many reasons, but especially because of
the important regional fisheries, as well as the
preponderance of evidence suggesting that it
experiences and responds strongly to interannual
and interdecadal variability in ocean conditions
(Batchelder and Powell, 2002; Strub et al., 2002).
During the planning of the NEP program, it
became clear that the southern realm of the eastern
North Pacific (hereafter the California Current
System or CCS) and the northern realm of the
eastern North Pacific (hereafter the Coastal Gulf
of Alaska, or CGOA) are linked through ocean
and atmosphere processes on annual, interannual
and interdecadal scales. Thus, an integrated
program of observations, modeling, retrospective
and monitoring studies was designed to enable
comparison of the two regions. The goals of the
US GLOBEC NEP program are discussed in
detail elsewhere (Batchelder and Powell, 2002;
Strub et al., 2002; US GLOBEC, 1996), with more
specifics for the CCS and CGOA available from
Batchelder et al. (2002) and Weingartner et al.
(2002), respectively. Briefly, the core goals are to
investigate (1) how the productivities of the
CGOA and CCS covary as they respond to ocean
and atmosphere forcing; (2) how mesoscale
process and pattern at multiple trophic levels
influence zooplankton biomass, production, composition, vital rates and transports; and (3) how
interannual and interdecadal variability in physical
forcing and ecosystem food web structure and
dynamics influence juvenile salmon survival in the
coastal ocean.
The US GLOBEC NEP program has been
implemented in phases. An initial modeling,
retrospective, and pilot monitoring phase (I) in
both the CGOA and CCS was followed by a
second phase (II) of intensive multiyear field
investigations and continued monitoring and
modeling. A third phase (III), synthesis, is about
to begin for the NEP program. The 17 papers in
this issue report results from activities undertaken
in phases I and II, and document the broad-based
research that has spanned wind (physics) to whales
(top trophics). The results report on the full range
of trophic levels studied, from phytoplankton
(Childers et al., 2005; Sherr et al., 2005) to birds
(Ainley et al., 2005) and whales (Tynan et al.,
2005), and include several contributions on the key
zooplankton (Coyle and Pinchuk, 2005; GomezGutierrez et al., 2005; Ressler et al., 2005; Swartzman et al., 2005) and salmon (Armstrong et al.,
2005; Botsford et al., 2005; Cross et al., 2005),
species that were targeted by GLOBEC for specific
emphasis in the NEP.
0967-0645/$ - see front matter r 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.dsr2.2004.10.001
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Editorial / Deep-Sea Research II 52 (2005) 1–4
Many of the papers in this issue report results
from the process- and survey-based intensive field
studies of one or a few years at most. In the CCS,
Barth et al. (2005), depict the development of
mesoscale structure in the circulation and water
properties during the spring–summer upwelling
‘‘season’’ off Oregon in 2000. Although the
structure is simpler during the early upwelling
season (May–June), it already shows the effects of
interactions with bottom topography (the Heceta
Bank complex) and coastal promontories (Cape
Blanco). Mesoscale physical structure strongly
impacts spatial patterning of phytoplankton
chlorophyll (Barth et al., 2005), zooplankton
(Reese et al., 2005; Ressler et al., 2005; Suchman
and Brodeur, 2005; Sutor et al., 2005), and higher
trophics—birds (Ainley et al., 2005) and mammals
(Tynan et al., 2005) in this system. Reese et al.
(2005) report the spatial and seasonal patterns of
near-surface zooplankton, Suchman and Brodeur
(2005) the structure of the trawl captured medusae,
while both Ressler et al. (2005) and Sutor et al.
(2005) use acoustics to describe pattern of plankton, but at different scales—mesoscale (Ressler et
al., 2005) and fine-scale (Sutor et al., 2005). Tynan
and colleagues (2005) found that cetaceans, like
many of the lower trophic levels, respond markedly to ocean physical structure, often associated
with Heceta Bank and Cape Blanco. Ainley et al.
(2005) provide a similar analysis for seabirds, with
a similar finding that the ocean structure and
ecosystem conditions in the Heceta Bank and
Cape Blanco regions have high seabird densities,
suggesting that these locations are favorable
feeding sites.
These results provide evidence of ‘‘biological
hotspots’’ that are created by physical forcing
interacting with complex bathymetry to stimulate
phytoplankton production, which propagates to
the highest levels of the marine food web, either
through direct trophodynamic effects or behavioral responses (see Fig. 5 in Batchelder et al., 2002).
Coast-wide acoustic hake surveys from 1995 and
1998 are used by Swartzman et al. (2005) to
describe the patchiness of euphausiids, and their
relation to the equatorward jet and poleward
undercurrent. They hypothesize and the data tend
to suggest that euphausiid diel vertical migration
may interact with these opposing currents to
reduce alongshore advective displacement of euphausiids and concentrate biomass in the region
north of Cape Blanco.
In the CGOA, Weingartner et al. (2005) investigate the fate of freshwater runoff along the Alaska
south-central coast, using a box model of the
Alaska Coastal Current (ACC) along a 1500 km
length of coast. Although the magnitudes of several
of the components are difficult to estimate, the
results are consistent with a simple pattern of
westward advection (900–1200 km3 yr 1) of the
runoff from land into the ACC (800 km3 yr 1).
Flushing times of less than a year result from the
comparison of these rates and the estimate of fresh
water content of the ACC (540 km3). Childers et
al. (2005) describe the seasonal and interannual
cross-shelf nutrient distributions, including the
ACC, and shelf and slope regions along the Seward
Line. They document substantial interannual variability in late-winter nutrient concentrations which
have significant impact on total seasonal phytoplankton productivity. Coyle and Pinchuk (2005)
describe oceanic and neritic species complexes of
mesozooplankton, with a central shelf transition
region that is a mix of neritic and oceanic species,
probably arising as a result of extensive, but
episodic lateral eddy mixing.
It is difficult to quantify climate change and
variability from short-duration studies like the US
GLOBEC regional field programs. Typically, these
programs involve measurements that span a
fraction of a decade only. Consequently, it is
important that sites selected for study have
substantial historical sampling that can provide a
longer-term context to the short-duration field
programs of processes. Royer (2005) uses three
decades of hydrographic sampling at a nearshore
coastal station (GAK1) to explore seasonal and
interannual variability of the water column and
provide insights into the dominant forcing of the
ACC. A slightly different approach is used by
Gomez-Gutierrez et al. (2005) to advance our
understanding of regimes and El Niños on
euphausiid populations in the northern California
Current. Substantial data on euphausiids have
been collected by GLOBEC NEP since 1997, but
earlier sampling was spotty and discontinuous.
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Editorial / Deep-Sea Research II 52 (2005) 1–4
One of the better early (pre-1977 regime shift)
plankton data sets from 1970 to 1972 was retrospectively analyzed for euphausiids to provide a
comparison with the recently collected euphausiid
data (Gomez-Gutierrez et al., 2005). For other
data types, such as the small autotrophs (cyanobacteria and small eukaryote phytoplankton) no
previous data exist, and the data collected within
GLOBEC NEP (Sherr et al., 2005) will represent
the ‘‘historical’’ data for future investigations of
climate change/variability.
Another way to examine ecosystem dynamics
and pattern is through the use of models that
complement both field and retrospective studies.
Botsford et al. (2005) use several models to explore
the different dynamical responses of coho and
Chinook salmon to climate related changes in
physical conditions in the CCS. Seasonal and
spatial patterns of bioenergetics in CGOA pink
salmon are modeled by Cross et al. (2005) using
interannual, seasonal and spatial data on prey
availability and results of juvenile salmon diet
composition (Armstrong et al., 2005). US GLOBEC’s long-term observation program in the
CGOA will provide ca. 7 years of seasonal and
spatial physical (Weingartner et al., 2005), chemical (Childers et al., 2005), and biological (Coyle
and Pinchuk, 2005) data that will both enable
interpretation of interannual variability (El Niños,
etc.) and aid future model explorations of salmon
responses to physical variability.
A theme common to many of the papers is that
they document the seasonal and/or interannual
variability of a trophic level, a population, a
community, or a physical process. Understanding
this shorter-term variability, including the timing
of significant phenomena, such as upwelling
processes, the spring transition and the development of stratification and seasonal mesoscale
structure, is critical for interpreting the longerterm (interdecadal) variability in forcing and
understanding its impacts on coastal marine
ecosystems. Although many of these papers
address seasonality or interannual variability within one or the other of these two (CCS and CGOA)
ecosystems, they do not specifically address the
linkages between them. The task of linking the
dynamics of process and pattern across the CGOA
3
and CCS ecosystems of the NEP remains to be
accomplished, perhaps within the Phase III synthesis of the program.
We thank our colleagues for the time and effort
that they devoted to provide constructive reviews
of the manuscripts reported here. This is contribution number 470 of the US GLOBEC program,
jointly funded by the National Science Foundation
and NOAA’s Coastal Ocean Program.
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Harold P. Batchelder, P.T. Strub
College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences,
Oregon State University, 104 COAS Admin Bldg,
Corvallis, OR 97331-5503, USA
E-mail addresses: [email protected]
(H.P. Batchelder)
[email protected] (P.T. Strub)
E.J. Lessard
School of Oceanography, University of Washington,
Box 357940, Seattle, WA 98195, USA
E-mail address: [email protected]
T.J. Weingartner
Institute of Marine Science, University of Alaska,
Fairbanks, AK 99775, USA
E-mail address: [email protected]