Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Oceanography

Publication Date

1-1-2004

First Page

60

Last Page

67

Issue Number

SPL.ISS. 2

Volume Number

17

Abstract/ Summary

…two extreme cases can be identified and separated. Case 1 is that of a concentration of phytoplankton high compared to other particles…. In contrast, the inorganic particles are dominant in case 2.… In both cases dissolved yellow substance is present in variable amounts.… An ideal case 1 would be a pure culture of phytoplankton and an ideal case 2 a suspension of nonliving material with a zero concentration of pigments.

Morel and Prieur emphasized that these ideal cases are not encountered in nature, and they suggested the use of high or low values of the ratio of pigment concentration to scattering coefficient as a basis for discriminating between Case 1 and Case 2 waters. Although no specific values of this ratio were proposed to serve as criteria for classification, their example data suggested that the ratio of chlorophyll a concentration (in mg m-3) to the scattering coefficient at 550 nm (in m-1) in Case 1 waters is greater than 1 and in Case 2 waters is less than 1. Importantly, however, Morel and Prieur also showed data classified as “intermediate waters” with the ratio between about 1 and 2.2.

Although the original definition from 1977 did not imply a binary classification, the practice of most investigators in the following years clearly evolved toward a bipartite analysis.

Citation/Publisher Attribution

This article was published in Oceanography, Vol. 17, No. 2, a quarterly journal of The Oceanography Society.

Publisher Statement

© 2004 The Oceanography Society

DOI

10.5670/oceanog.2004.48

Version

publisher's version of the published document

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