[1] Physical forcing and biological response within the California Current System (CCS) are highly variable over a wide range of scales. Satellite remote sensing offers the only feasible means of quantifying this variability over the full extent of the CCS. Using six years (1997–2003) of daily SST and chlorophyll imagery, we map the spatial dependence of dominant temporal variability at resolut...

[1] Extensive AUVs surveys showed that during the development of upwelling, bioluminescent dinoflagellates from the northern part of the Monterey Bay, California (called the upwelling shadow area), were able to avoid advection by southward flowing currents along the entrance to the Bay, while non-bioluminescent phytoplankton were advected by currents. It is known that vertical swimming of dinof...

How do populations of highly mobile species inhabiting open environments become reproductively isolated and evolve into new species? We test the hypothesis that elevated ocean-surface temperatures can facilitate allopatry among pelagic populations and thus promote speciation. Oceanographic modelling has shown that increasing surface temperatures cause localization and reduction of upwelling, le...

BACKGROUND Upwelling systems are characterised by an intense primary biomass production in the surface (warmest) water after the outcrop of the bottom (coldest) water, which is rich in nutrients. Although it is known that the microbial assemblage plays an important role in the food chain of marine systems and that the upwelling systems that occur in southwest Brazil drive the complex dynamics o...

Studies of upwelling centers in the eastern Pacific suggest that maximum rates of nitrate uptake (light and nutrient saturated) increase, or shift-up, as newly upwelled water moves downstream. The rate of shift-up appears to be related to irradiance and the ambient concentration of limiting nutrient at the time of upwelling. A mathematical model was developed to evaluate effects of irradiance a...

Upwelling areas are shaped by enhanced primary production in surface waters, accompanied by a well-investigated planktonic succession. Although bacteria play an important role in biogeochemical cycles of upwelling systems, little is known about bacterial community composition and its development during upwelling events. The aim of this study was to investigate the succession of bacterial assemb...

[1] Data from Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites are used to study the seasonal evolution of temperature fronts in the northern California Current System (CCS), focusing on the interactions with topographic features. Fronts first appear close to the coast in response to upwelling winds, moving offshore with the continuous input of energy to the system. Late in the upwelling seas...

[1] After coastal upwelling, the water properties in the nearshore coastal region close to estuaries is determined by the race between the new estuarine plume traveling along the coast and the upwelled front (a marker for the old upwelled plume and the coastal pycnocline) returning to the coast under downwelling winds. Away from an estuary, downwelling winds can return the upwelled front to the...

[1] Data from the SeaWinds scatterometer on the QuikSCAT satellite are used to estimate upwelling around Cabo Frio, Brazil, due to Ekman transport and Ekman pumping. The region close to shore (up to 200 km from the coast) is characterized by negative wind stress curl (upwelling favorable) year-round, with maximum values during summer, and minimum values during fall. Integrated values from São S...

Karina J. Nielsen* and Sergio A. Navarrete Sonoma State University, Department of Biology, Rohnert Park, CA 94928, USA Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Estación Costera de Investigaciones Marinas and Center for Advanced Studies in Ecology and Biodiversity, Santiago, Chile *Correspondence: E-mail: [email protected] Abstract Theory suggests that variation in resource supply shoul...