Simulations of the effect of advective-diffusive processes on observations of plankton abundance and population rates

Abstract

The transport of plankters by water currents is acknowledged to have an important influence on observations of organism abundance and population processes, but assessment of this effect has been difficult to achieve. This paper presents simulations using the theory of A. Okubo and co-workers. The transport of multiple current drogues over time in a physically realistic advective and diffusive current field was simulated. The impact of transport processes on the plankton abundance associated with each current drogue was then evaluated, and the results are presented graphically. Although plankton numbers were held constant in the simulation, the inferred, but incorrect, population rate parameters that would be obtained using successive observations of plankton abundance in the simulated flow field are also presented.