Phytoplankton and the optical properties of surface waters

几十年来，海洋学家利用光学测量，如海洋颜色和叶绿素荧光来描述浮游植物在从毫米到海洋盆地的尺度上的分布，并取得了巨大的成功。一直以来，研究浮游植物生物学的研究人员已经表明，决定这些光学测量变化的基本过程——浮游植物对光的吸收及其作为叶绿素荧光的发射——可以受到光合生理、物种组成和细胞大小的强烈影响。因此，海洋光学观测有可能“超越生物量”，通过海洋观测系统不可或缺的测量，对浮游植物的生理状态和群落结构进行天气性、连续性和深度分解评估。反过来，一些人认识到，这些相同的测量可以用来指导下一代物理、生态和生物地球化学模型，这些模型直接受到光学观测的限制，光学观测描述了光吸收的基本过程及其在光合作用中的利用，以及粒子对光的散射。

For decades, oceanographers have used optical measurements such as ocean color and chlorophyll fluorescence to describe the distributions of phytoplankton on scales from millimeters to ocean basins, with great success. And all along, researchers who study the biology of phytoplankton have shown that the fundamental processes that determine variability in these optical measurements - absorption of light by phytoplankton and its emission as chlorophyll fluorescence - can be strongly influenced by photosynthetic physiology, species composition and cell size. Optical observation of the ocean therefore has the potential to go "beyond biomass" toward synoptic, continuous and depth-resolved assessment of the physiological status and community structure of phytoplankton from measurements that are integral to ocean observing systems. In turn, it is recognized by some that these same measurements can be used to guide a next generation of physical, ecological and biogeochemical models that are directly constrained by optical observations describing the fundamental processes of light absorption and its utilization in photosynthesis, as well as the scattering of light by particles.