Project description DEENESFRITPL Studying phytoplankton to prepare for climate change Marine phytoplankton provide a vital perspective on global carbon cycles and climate change. Recognising their importance, further research into their functioning could provide tools for predicting the effects of climate change. The EU-funded PHY-GO project will use the global deployment of autonomous profiling floats that are equipped with biogeochemical sensors to gain new insights into phytoplankton processes and distributions. The project will study phytoplankton community structure and compare it to the bio-optical signals that the floats detect. By incorporating innovative flow cytometry methods and precise bio-optical evaluations, the project will develop and apply novel data and techniques to their research. Show the project objective Hide the project objective Objective Marine phytoplankton are a primary vector in the transport of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to the ocean interior via the biological carbon pump. The magnitude and efficiency of this flux hinges on phytoplankton community structure—the relative abundance of different phytoplankton groups present within a given water mass. Therefore, accurate estimates of phytoplankton community structure are crucial for understanding global carbon cycles and for anticipating the impact of global climate change. Phytoplankton distributions within the global ocean are typically inferred from bio-optical proxies reflecting phytoplankton physiology (e.g. chlorophyll fluorescence) or concentrations of particulate carbon (e.g. attenuation coefficients or optical backscatter coefficients). The deployment of biogeochemical Argo (BGC-Argo) autonomous profiling floats is transforming the global coverage of these measurements, providing new insight into connections between phytoplankton distributions and export processes. However, few studies have evaluated relationships between bio-optical proxies as measured by BGC-Argo floats and direct measurements of phytoplankton community structure, and none have performed an intercomparison of these relationships across different ocean basins. Therefore, I propose to 1) utilize a combination of novel and existing flow cytometry methods to estimate group-specific phytoplankton biomass across four disparate ocean provinces, 2) evaluate the bio-optical proxies that best predict group-specific phytoplankton biomass within each province, 3) leverage relationships identified in objective 2 to develop a novel transfer function for estimating phytoplankton biomass based on bio-optical proxies alone, and 4) apply this function to existing BGC-Argo data to quantify the importance of variability in phytoplankton community structure to carbon export to the mesopelagic zone, as compared to other mechanisms. Fields of science medical and health sciencesbasic medicinephysiologynatural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesatmospheric sciencesclimatologyclimatic changesagricultural sciencesagricultural biotechnologybiomass Programme(s) HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Main Programme Topic(s) HORIZON-MSCA-2021-PF-01-01 - MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2021 Call for proposal HORIZON-MSCA-2021-PF-01 See other projects for this call Funding Scheme MSCA-PF - MSCA-PF Coordinator SORBONNE UNIVERSITE Net EU contribution € 211 754,88 Address 21 RUE DE L'ECOLE DE MEDECINE 75006 Paris France See on map Region Ile-de-France Ile-de-France Paris Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Participation in EU R&I programmes Opens in new window HORIZON collaboration network Opens in new window Total cost No data
