Stochastic 0-dimensional Biogeochemical Flux Model: Effect of temperature fluctuations on the dynamics of the biogeochemical properties in a marine ecosystem

TL;DR

This paper introduces a stochastic 0D biogeochemical flux model incorporating temperature fluctuations, revealing their impact on plankton dynamics and ecosystem responses in marine environments.

Contribution

The study develops a novel stochastic model that accounts for temperature variability, enhancing realism in marine biogeochemical ecosystem simulations.

Findings

Temperature fluctuations influence plankton population dominance.

Noise intensity and correlation time affect ecosystem regimes.

Fourier analysis shows ecosystem response varies with noise levels.

Abstract

We present a new stochastic model, based on a 0-dimensional version of the well known biogeochemical flux model (BFM), which allows to take into account the temperature random fluctuations present in natural systems and therefore to describe more realistically the dynamics of real marine ecosystems. The study presents a detailed analysis of the effects of randomly varying temperature on the lower trophic levels of the food web and ocean biogeochemical processes. More in detail, the temperature is described as a stochastic process driven by an additive self-correlated Gaussian noise. Varying both correlation time and intensity of the noise source, the predominance of different plankton populations is observed, with regimes shifted towards the coexistence or the exclusion of some populations. Finally a Fourier analysis carried out on the time series of the plankton populations shows how the ecosystem responds to the seasonal driving for different values of the noise intensity.