Instability of a Uniform Plankton Distribution

Instability of a Uniform Plankton Distribution

For a plankton model system, a horizontally uniform distribution becomes unstable if the zooplankton component carries out diurnal vertical migrations in an ocean with a speed difference between the currents in upper and lower waterlaycrs. With turbulent diffusion included in the model, the instabil...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Wolfgang Ebenhöh
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Norwegian Society of Automatic Control 1981-04-01
Series:Modeling, Identification and Control
Subjects:
Modelling
phytoplankton
zooplankton
patchiness
spatial distribution
stability
turbulent diffusion
Online Access:http://www.mic-journal.no/PDF/1981/MIC-1981-2-3.pdf
Description
Summary:For a plankton model system, a horizontally uniform distribution becomes unstable if the zooplankton component carries out diurnal vertical migrations in an ocean with a speed difference between the currents in upper and lower waterlaycrs. With turbulent diffusion included in the model, the instability occurs beyond a threshold speed difference. A numerical estimation of the threshold and of the critical patch size gives reasonable values.
ISSN:0332-7353
1890-1328

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