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Beyond the mean:  ‘Event-scale’ phenomena and their 

relationship to ecosystem forecasting

Mark D. Ohman¹, Uwe Send¹, Dan L. Rudnick¹, David A. Demer², 

Todd R. Martz¹, Richard A. Feely³

¹Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla

²Southwest Fisheries Science Center, NMFS/NOAA, La Jolla

³Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, NOAA, Seattle

The advent of mooring and glider programs in the southern California Current System has made it possible to resolve ‘event-scale’ perturbations in the upper ocean, a significant advance over the coarse temporal and spatial resolution of the past.  The detection and resolution of high-frequency phenomena is important because these events are thought to play a disproportionate role in determining nutrient fluxes, organism exposure to acidified waters and hypoxia, larval fish feeding success, and carbon export.  We will illustrate examples of both temporal and spatial ‘events’ that have significant ecosystem impacts.  Moored observations resolve upwelling event-triggered blooms, causing low pH, undersaturated conditions that first augment, then draw down pCO₂.  Such observations also permit us to measure nitrate consumption and relate it to phytoplankton abundance and rapid changes of f-ratios.  Echotag acoustic sensors on the moorings resolve zooplankton and fish, permitting detection of responses to changes in habitat conditions. Spray glider-based observations have revealed the importance of biophysical frontal systems, which are typically regions of abrupt changes (and often local increases) in phytoplankton Chl-a and zooplankton acoustic backscatter.  Glider studies have also uncovered regions of locally elevated mixing that may affect nutrient availability.