Publication Date:
2022-10-26
Description:
© The Author(s), 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Hoarfrost, A., Balmonte, J. P., Ghobrial, S., Ziervogel, K., Bane, J., Gawarkiewicz, G., & Arnosti, C. Gulf Stream ring water intrusion on the Mid-Atlantic Bight continental shelf break affects microbially driven carbon cycling. Frontiers in Marine Science, 6, (2019): 394, doi:10.3389/fmars.2019.00394.
Description:
Warm core, anticyclonic rings that spin off from the Gulf Stream circulate through the region directly offshore of the Mid-Atlantic Bight. If a warm core ring reaches the continental shelf break, its warm, highly saline water may subduct under cooler, fresher continental shelf surface water, resulting in subsurface waters at the shelf break and over the upper continental slope with high temperatures and salinities and distinct physical and chemical properties characteristic of Gulf Stream water. Such intruding water may also have microbial communities with distinct functional capacities, which may in turn affect the rate and nature of carbon cycling in this coastal/shelf environment. However, the functional capabilities of microbial communities within ring intrusion waters relative to surrounding continental shelf waters are largely unexplored. We investigated microbial community capacity to initiate organic matter remineralization by measuring hydrolysis of a suite of polysaccharide, peptide, and glucose substrates along a transect oriented across the Mid-Atlantic Bight shelf, shelf break, and upper slope. At the outermost sampling site, warm and salty water derived from a Gulf Stream warm core ring was present in the lower portion of the water column. This water exhibited hydrolytic capacities distinct from other sampling sites, and exhibited lower heterotrophic bacterial productivity overall. Warm core rings adjacent to the Mid-Atlantic Bight shelf have increased in frequency and duration in recent years. As the influence of warm core rings on the continental shelf and slope increases in the future, the rate and nature of organic matter remineralization on the continental shelf may also shift.
Description:
This study was funded by the NSF (OCE-1332881 and OCE-1736772 to CA; OCE-1657853 to GG), with additional funding provided by the DOE (DE-SC0013887).
Keywords:
Warm core ring
;
Ring intrusion
;
Mid-Atlantic Bight
;
Heterotrophy
;
Carbon cycling
;
Enzymatic activity
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Article
