International Research Fellowship Program: The Effect of Subsurface Variability on Nutrient Fluxes and the Biological Response to Upwelling off Northwest Africa

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0701252PalterThe International Research Fellowship Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct nine to twenty-four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad.This award will support a twelve-month research fellowship by Dr. Jaime Palter to work with Dr. Josep L. Pelegri at CMIMA Marine Institute in Barcelona, Spain.The Northwest African upwelling region, which extends southward from the Iberian Peninsula to the tropical Atlantic, is one of the world's four major eastern boundary upwelling regions. In addition to intense regional interest spawned by the economic importance of the fisheries that thrive there, the locale is of global interest as it forms the eastern boundary condition of the North Atlantic subtropical gyre and has been implicated in the biogeochemical cycling of Antarctic water masses. Recent studies have revealed that variability in the biology of this upwelling region cannot be explained by wind forcing alone. It is hypothesized that complex and time-varying currents alter the subsurface nutrient reservoir and thereby impact the biological response to upwelling. Dr. Josep Pelegri is the principal investigator of CANOA, a large-scale observational and modeling program that seeks a comprehensive understanding of the circulation and variability of the water masses in the Northwest African upwelling region. This work interfaces with CANOA to assess the impact of such subsurface variability on the nutrient reservoir of the upwelling region. To these ends, the PI is analyzing historical and newly collected hydrographic, ARGO float, and nutrient data, and deploying an in-situ nitrate sensor on a CANOA mooring to obtain the first continuous nutrient time series in the region. The second piece of this work is aimed at using an enhanced understanding of the regional dynamics to gain insight into satellite chlorophyll patterns. This component of the work will combine the analysis of satellite chlorophyll and other satellite-observed variables with the in situ data sets described above to explore the primary controls on phytoplankton biomass in the region.