The Effects of Pigment Photooxidation and Biogenic Source on the Absorption of Light by Detritus Derived from Phytoplankton

将研究影响浮游植物生物碎屑的色素含量、光谱吸收和光化学性质的过程。据推测，碎屑叶绿素，pheopigments，和类胡萝卜素的光氧化率耦合通过降解，和机制的问题将在实验室实验中解决，一些采用模型系统碎屑色素。将研究食草动物群落组成对生物碎屑光谱特征的影响。将测定桡足类和异养原生动物颗粒废物的色素含量、光谱吸收和光依赖性色素漂白率。将通过高效液相色谱法分析颜料。通过溶剂浸提将微粒吸收光谱（过滤材料）划分为组分光谱。将评估具有类似腐殖酸光谱特征的相对光稳定的碎屑部分的潜在吸收。负责大部分海洋生物生产的微生物植物含有吸收阳光的色素，就像它们的陆地同行一样。这些色素长期以来一直被用于通过直接化学分析给定水体中存在的叶绿素量来量化海洋浮游植物。最近，发现浮游植物分布可以根据它们赋予水的颜色进行远程测量，这为大规模分析海洋生产提供了令人兴奋的机会。纳尔逊关于与各种海洋放牧环境相关的色素差异的工作可能会导致从远程收集的光学数据中提取更多生态信息的能力，而不仅仅是植物生物量的静态差异。研究色素降解机制的方法可能允许实际的生物动力学分析，如海洋食物网动力学和粒子通量。

Processes affecting the pigment content, spectral absorption, and photochemical properties of biogenic detritus derived from phytoplankton will be investigated. It is hypothesized that the rates of photooxidation of detrital chlorophylls, pheopigments, and carotenoids are coupled through a degradation, and the question of mechanism will be addressed in laboratory experiments, some employing a model system for detrital pigments. The effect of grazer community composition on the spectral character of biogenic detritus will be examined. Pigment content, spectral absorption, and the rates of light-dependent pigment bleaching will be determined for the particulate wastes of copepods and heterothrophic protozoans. Pigments will be analyed by high performance liquid chromatography. Particulate absorption spectra (filtered material) will be partitioned into component spectra by solvent extraction. The potential absorption of a relatively light-stable detrital fraction, of humic-like spectral character, will be assessed. The microscopic plants that are responsible for most of the ocean's biological production contain pigments for absorbing sunlight just as their terrestrial counterparts do. These pigments have long been used to quantify marine phytoplankton through direct chemical analysis of the amount of chlorophyll present in a given body of water. Recently, the discovery that phytoplankton distributions can be measured remotely based on the color they impart to the water has opened up exciting opportunities for the large scale analysis of marine production. Nelson's work on the pigment differences associated with various marine grazing environments may result in the ability to extract much more ecological information from remotely collected optical data than just the static differences in plant biomass. The approach of examining the mechanisms of pigment degration may allow for the actual analysis of biological dynamics such as marine food web dynamics and particle flux.