Plankton
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Plankton are at the base of the marine food web and generally not fished by humans. Changes in the plankton will have impacts on the rest of the marine ecosystem including on the carbon cycle, living marine resources used by humans and threatened marine species including apex predators. Climate variability significantly impacts plankton in the ocean, both the microflora (phytoplankton) and the microfauna (zooplankton), over both short and long timescales. | |
| Domain: | Ocean | |
| Subdomain: | Biological/Ecosystems | |
| Scientific Area: | Biosphere | |
| ECV Steward: | ||
| Products: | Zooplankton Diversity; Zooplankton Biomass; Phytoplankton Diversity; Phytoplankton Biomass | |
Global Map of Zooplankton
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Figure: Global map of current zooplankton observations. Black points show CPR samples, red points indicate long term zooplankton sampling stations that could provide diversity measurements (note that this map is incomplete with regard to zooplankton monitoring stations). Data source: https://www.cprsurvey.org/data/our-data/ |
ECV Products and Requirements
These products and requirements reflect the Implementation Plan 2022 (GCOS-244).
The requirements are found in the complete 2022 ECVs Requirements document as well: ECV Plankton.
| Products | Zooplankton Diversity | Zooplankton Biomass | Phytoplankton Diversity | Phytoplankton Biomass | ||||
| offshore | nearshore | offshore | nearshore | |||||
| (*) | Unit | Values | Values | Values | Values | |||
| Horizontal Resolution | G | km | 100 | 0.1 | 100 | 100 | 0.1 | 100 |
| B | 1 | 0.1 | 1 | 0.1 | ||||
| T | 2500 | 0.1 | 2500 | 2000 | 1 | 2000 | ||
| Vertical Resolution | G | m | 10 nominal | 10 | 10 nominal | - | ||
| B | 10 nominal | 10 nominal | - | |||||
| T | surface | surface | surface | - | ||||
| Temporal Resolution | G | month | 1 | 1 | Weekly-monthly | Weekly- seasonal | ||
| B | 3 | 3 | ||||||
| T | 12 | 12 | 12 | 10 | ||||
| Timeliness | G | y | 1 | 1 | ||||
| B | ||||||||
| T | 2 | 2 | ||||||
| Required Measurement Uncertainty (2-sigma) | G | %, count, concentration, weight (biomass) | ||||||
| B | ||||||||
| T | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | ||||
| Stability | G | |||||||
| B | ||||||||
| T | ||||||||
(*) Goal (G): an ideal requirement above which further improvements are not necessary. Breakthrough (B): an intermediate level between threshold and goal which, if achieved, would result in a significant improvement for the targeted application. The breakthrough value may also indicate the level at which specified uses within climate monitoring become possible. It may be appropriate to have different breakthrough values for different uses. Threshold (T): the minimum requirement to be met to ensure that data are useful
Data Sources
This list provides sources for openly accessible data sets with worldwide coverage for which metadata is available. It is curated by the respective GCOS ECV Steward(s). The list does not claim to be complete. Anyone with a suitable dataset who wishes it to be added to this list should contact the GCOS Secretariat.
- Continuous Plankton Recorder Survey (CPR)
- Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS)
- Global Ocean Ship-based Hydrographic Investigations Program (GO-SHIP)
- OceanSITES
