Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Altogether, the pelagic zone occupies 1,330 million km 3 (320 million mi 3) with a mean depth of 3.68 km (2.29 mi) and maximum depth of 11 km (6.8 mi). [2] [3] [4] Pelagic life decreases as depth increases. The pelagic zone contrasts with the benthic and demersal zones at the bottom of the sea. The benthic zone is the ecological region at the ...
The vast majority of bacteria in lakes and ponds obtain their energy by decomposing vegetation and animal matter. In the pelagic zone, dead fish and the occasional allochthonous input of litterfall are examples of coarse particulate organic matter (CPOM>1 mm). Bacteria degrade these into fine particulate organic matter (FPOM<1 mm) and then ...
Benthic-pelagic coupling are processes that connect the benthic zone and the pelagic zone through the exchange of energy, mass, or nutrients. These processes play a prominent role in both freshwater and marine ecosystems and are influenced by a number of chemical, biological, and physical forces that are crucial to functions from nutrient cycling to energy transfer in food webs.
The biological community of the mesopelagic zone has adapted to a low-light environment. [16] This is a very efficient ecosystem with many organisms recycling the organic matter sinking from the epipelagic zone [17] resulting in very little organic carbon making it to deeper ocean
Pelagic sediment or pelagite is a fine-grained sediment that accumulates as the result of the settling of particles to the floor of the open ocean, far from land. These particles consist primarily of either the microscopic, calcareous or siliceous shells of phytoplankton or zooplankton ; clay -size siliciclastic sediment ; or some mixture of these.
An NPZ model is the most basic abstract representation, expressed as a mathematical model, of a pelagic ecosystem which examines the interrelationships between quantities of nutrients, phytoplankton and zooplankton as time-varying states which depend only on the relative concentrations of the various states at the given time.
Thorson's rule (named after Gunnar Thorson by S. A. Mileikovsky in 1971) [1] is an ecogeographical rule which states that benthic marine invertebrates at low latitudes tend to produce large numbers of eggs developing to pelagic (often planktotrophic [plankton-feeding]) and widely dispersing larvae, whereas at high latitudes such organisms tend to produce fewer and larger lecithotrophic (yolk ...
Layers of the pelagic zone. The bathypelagic zone or bathyal zone (from Greek βαθύς (bathýs), deep) is the part of the open ocean that extends from a depth of 1,000 to 4,000 m (3,300 to 13,000 ft) below the ocean surface.