TY - JOUR
T1 - Bottom-up excitable models of phytoplankton blooms
AU - Huppert, Amit
AU - Olinky, Ronen
AU - Stone, Lewi
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank Utza Pollingher and Tamar Zohary for kindly allowing us to make use of field data collected at Lake Kinneret, and Werner Eckert and Tom Berman for constant encouragement. We gratefully acknowledge support from the James S. McDonnell Foundation, and the European Union Fifth Framework grant ‘Phytoplankton On-Line’.
PY - 2004/7
Y1 - 2004/7
N2 - A simple nutrient-phytoplankton model is used to explore the dynamics of phytoplankton blooms. The model exhibits excitable behaviour in the sense that a large scale outbreak can only be triggered when a critical nutrient threshold is exceeded. The model takes into account several features often neglected but whose combined effect proves very important: (i) rapid nutrient recycling associated with the microbial loop and patch formation; (ii) self-shading; and (iii) a bottom-up approach, whereby nutrient levels are responsible for both the triggering and the demise of the bloom. Although the literature is replete with studies of 'top-down' models in which zooplankton grazing control the triggering and demise of the bloom, bottom-up models are nevertheless appropriate in many circumstances. We provide a full mathematical investigation of the effects of these three different features in an excitable system framework.
AB - A simple nutrient-phytoplankton model is used to explore the dynamics of phytoplankton blooms. The model exhibits excitable behaviour in the sense that a large scale outbreak can only be triggered when a critical nutrient threshold is exceeded. The model takes into account several features often neglected but whose combined effect proves very important: (i) rapid nutrient recycling associated with the microbial loop and patch formation; (ii) self-shading; and (iii) a bottom-up approach, whereby nutrient levels are responsible for both the triggering and the demise of the bloom. Although the literature is replete with studies of 'top-down' models in which zooplankton grazing control the triggering and demise of the bloom, bottom-up models are nevertheless appropriate in many circumstances. We provide a full mathematical investigation of the effects of these three different features in an excitable system framework.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=3042576735&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.bulm.2004.01.003
DO - 10.1016/j.bulm.2004.01.003
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C2 - 15210323
AN - SCOPUS:3042576735
SN - 0092-8240
VL - 66
SP - 865
EP - 878
JO - Bulletin of Mathematical Biology
JF - Bulletin of Mathematical Biology
IS - 4
ER -