Biological Station, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, N-7491 Trondheim, Norway, E-mail: egil.sakshaug@vm.ntnu.no
Much information on the annual primary production in the
polar seas has been compiled in the last 15 years. In the deep Arctic Ocean,
for instance, it is—albeit still low—considerably higher than envisaged
earlier, not the least because the multiyear ice is not the “dead zone” it once
was thought to be. It is also recognized that inter-annual and decadal
variations in arctic and sub-arctic ecosystems are closely associated with
marine climate variability, leavmaking the term
"ecological balance" little not very meaningful
in a polar seas.
In a book to be published in March or April 2003, I have
compiled information on the total primary production (without DOC) in all
arctic and sub-arctic seas. Although not very precise and partly based on
educated guesses due to the partially sparse database, constraints given by the
seasonal distribution of ice, stratification, and nutrient concentration, can
yield estimates that are not too remote from reality. The Central Arctic Ocean
produces annually around 11 g C m–2 and the Siberian Shelf Seas, 55
g C m–2. Among the latter, the Barents and Chukchi Seas have the
highest annual production, 90 and 70 g C m–2 (caused by the influence of Atlantic and Bering Sea Water,
respectively), whereas the other Siberian shelf seas average 35 g C m–2. Thus annual primary production in the Arctic
Ocean is well below the global average of 110 g C m–2.
Annual production in
the Atlantic Subarctic (east and west) and the Bering Shelf is 100 and >230
g C m–2, respectively. The
arctic and sub-arctic seas together produce 1.27 Pg C annually, with 0.33 Pg in
the Arctic Ocean (shelf seas included), 0.48 Pg in the Atlantic Subarctic, and
0.46 Pg in the Bering Sea. Annual average new production ranges from about 2 %
of the total production in the Central Arctic Ocean to 30-50 % in the
high-productive sub-arctic seas.
Sakshaug, E. (2003). Primary and secondary production. In Stein, R. et al., The Arctic Carbon Cycle. Springer (in press)