Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Marine Ecology

Rights and Access Note

This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this item in any way that is permitted by copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. Rights assessment remains the responsibility of the researcher. In addition, no permission is required from the rights-holder(s) for non-commercial uses.

Publication Date

5-20-2009

First Page

133

Last Page

150

Issue Number

2

Volume Number

30

Abstract/ Summary

Climate change redistributes turbulence in both space and time, adding urgency to understanding of turbulence effects. Many analytic and analog models used to simulate and assess effects of turbulence on plankton rely on simple Couette flow. There shear rates are constant and spatially uniform, and hence so is vorticity. Over the last decade, however, turbulence research within fluid dynamics has focused on the structure of dissipative vortices in space and time. Vorticity gradients, finite net diffusion of vorticity and small radii of curvature of streamlines are ubiquitous features of turbulent vortices at dissipation scales but are explicitly excluded from simple, steady Couette flows. All of these flow components contribute instabilities that cause rotation of particles and so are important to simulate in future laboratory devices designed to assess effects of turbulence on nutrient uptake, particle coagulation, motility and predator-prey encounter in the plankton. The Burgers vortex retains these signature features of turbulence and provides a simplified "cartoon"of vortex structure and dynamics that nevertheless obeys the Navier-Stokes equations. Moreover, this idealization closely resembles many dissipative vortices observed in both the laboratory and the field as well as in direct numerical simulations of turbulence. It is simple enough to allow both simulation in numerical models and fabrication of analog devices that selectively reproduce its features. Exercise of such numerical and analog models promises additional insights into mechanisms of turbulence effects on passive trajectories and local accumulations of both living and nonliving particles, into solute exchange with living and nonliving particles and into more subtle influences on sensory processes and swimming trajectories of plankton, including demersal organisms and settling larvae in turbulent bottom boundary layers. The literature on biological consequences of vortical turbulence has focused primarily on the smallest, Kolmogorov-scale vortices of length scale η. Theoretical dissipation spectra and direct numerical simulation, however, indicate that typical dissipative vortices with radii of 7η to 8η, peak azimuthal speeds of order 1 cm s-1 and lifetimes of order 10 s or longer (and much longer for moderate pelagic turbulence intensities) deserve new attention in studies of biological effects of turbulence.

Citation/Publisher Attribution

Jumars, P.A., J.H. Trowbridge, E. Boss, and L. Karp-Boss, 2009. Turbulence-plankton interactions: a new cartoon. Marine Ecology 30, pp. 133-150

Publisher Statement

©2009 Blackwell Verlag GmbH

DOI

10.1111/j.1439-0485.2009.00288.x

Version

publisher's version of the published document

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In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted.