Marine plankton play a crucial role in carbon storage, global climate, and ecosystem function. Planktonic ecosystems are embedded in patches of water that are continuously moving, stretching, and diluting. For this reason the fluid dynamic at the mesoscale, as a source of heterogeneity, needs to properly taken into account. In this talk we present an ecosystem model that describes biomass production and carbon dynamics within a Lagrangian patch in the ocean. First, we illustrate its theoretical background from both a physical and biological perspective. Then, we show that our framework is able to reproduce observed biochemical patterns during the SOIREE fertilization experiment. Finally, we provide some insight on how a comparison with a fluid-dynamical explicit model can help on quantify tracer variance decay and its relation with the mixing processes.
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Enrico Ser-Giacomi Contact form