Bioavailability of organic matter in a highly disturbed estuary: The role of detrital and algal resources
AUTOR(ES)
Sobczak, William V.
FONTE
The National Academy of Sciences
RESUMO
The importance of algal and detrital food supplies to the planktonic food web of a highly disturbed, estuarine ecosystem was evaluated in response to declining zooplankton and fish populations. We assessed organic matter bioavailability among a diversity of habitats and hydrologic inputs over 2 years in San Francisco Estuary's Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta. Results show that bioavailable dissolved organic carbon from external riverine sources supports a large component of ecosystem metabolism. However, bioavailable particulate organic carbon derived primarily from internal phytoplankton production is the dominant food supply to the planktonic food web. The relative importance of phytoplankton as a food source is surprising because phytoplankton production is a small component of the ecosystem's organic-matter mass balance. Our results indicate that management plans aimed at modifying the supply of organic matter to riverine, estuarine, and coastal food webs need to incorporate the potentially wide nutritional range represented by different organic matter sources.
ACESSO AO ARTIGO
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=123027Documentos Relacionados
- Circulation and suspended particulate matter transport in a tidally dominated estuary: caravelas estuary, Bahia, Brazil
- High bacterial carbon demand and low growth efficiency at a tropical hypereutrophic estuary: importance of dissolved organic matter remineralization
- Characterization of dissolved organic matter in the Piauí river estuary, Northeast Brazil
- Spatiotemporal distribution of the benthic macrofauna in an urbanized subtropical estuary: environmental variations and anthropogenic impacts
- Heterotrophic utilization of glucose and glutamate in an estuary: effect of season and nutrient load.