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Oxygen-carbon dioxide-nutrients relationships in the Southeastern Region of the Bering Sea

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Abstract

The vertical distribution of density, salinity, temperature, dissolved oxygen, apparent oxygen utilization, nutrients, preformed phosphate, pH, alkalinity, alkalinity: chlorinity ratio, “in situ” partial pressure of carbon dioxide, and percent saturation of calcite and aragonite, for the Southeastern Bering Sea, is studied and explained in terms of biological and physical processes. Some hydrological interactions between the Bering Sea and the North Pacific Ocean are explained. The horizontal distribution of dissolved oxygen at 2000 and 2500 m depths, throughout the Bering Sea, indicates that deep water is flowing from the Pacific, through the Kamchatka Strait, and then northward and eastward in the Bering Sea. Based on the dissolved oxygen distribution we estimate roughly that it takes 20 years for the deep waters to move from the Kamchatka Strait to the Southeastern part of the eastern basin. The surface concentration of nutrients is higher in the Bering Sea than in the North Pacific Ocean, probably because of upwelling and intense vertical mixing in the Bering Sea. A multivariable regression analysis of dissolved oxygen as a function of phosphate concentration and potential temperature was applied for the region where the potential temperature-salinity diagram is straight, and the confidence interval of the PO4 coefficient, at the 95% probability level, was found consistent with theRedfield biochemical oxidation model. The calcium carbonate saturation calculations show that the Bering Sea is supersaturated with aragonite in the upper 100 m, and with calcite in the upper 200 m. Below these depths seawater is undersaturated with respect to these two minerals.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Oceanography, Oregon State University, 97331, Corvallis, Oregon, USA

    Ricardo M. Pytkowicz

Authors
  1. Saúl Alvarez-Borrego
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  2. Louis I. Gordon
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  3. Lynn B. Jones
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  4. P. Kilho Park
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  5. Ricardo M. Pytkowicz
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Alvarez-Borrego, S., Gordon, L.I., Jones, L.B. et al. Oxygen-carbon dioxide-nutrients relationships in the Southeastern Region of the Bering Sea. Journal of the Oceanographical Society of Japan 28, 71–93 (1972). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02109722

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