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Edited by James H. Brown, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, and approved April 6, 2006 (received for review February 10, 2006)
Abstract
Oceanic communities are sources or sinks of CO2, depending on the balance between primary production and community respiration. The prediction of how global climate change will modify this metabolic balance of the oceans is limited by the lack of a comprehensive underlying theory. Here, we show that the balance between production and respiration is profoundly affected by environmental temperature. We extend the general metabolic theory of ecology to the production and respiration of oceanic communities and show that ecosystem rates can be reliably scaled from theoretical knowledge of organism physiology and measurement of population abundance. Our theory predicts that the differential temperature-dependence of respiration and photosynthesis at the organism level determines the response of the metabolic balance of the epipelagic ocean to changes in ambient temperature, a prediction that we support with empirical data over the global ocean. Furthermore, our model predicts that there will be a negative feedback of ocean communities to climate warming because they will capture less CO2 with a future increase in ocean temperature. This feedback of marine biota will further aggravate the anthropogenic effects on global warming.
Footnotes
- †To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: alop{at}gi.ieo.es
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Author contributions: Á.L.-U., E.S.M., R.P.H., and X.I. analyzed data and wrote the paper.
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Conflict of interest statement: No conflicts declared.
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This paper was submitted directly (Track II) to the PNAS office.
- Abbreviations:
- AMT,
- Atlantic meridional transect;
- CR,
- community respiration;
- GPP,
- gross primary production;
- MTE,
- metabolic theory of ecology;
- NPP,
- net primary production;
- PAR,
- photosynthetic active radiation.
Abbreviations:
- © 2006 by The National Academy of Sciences of the USA
Scaling the metabolic balance of the oceans
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