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Oxygen dynamics in marine productive ecosystems at ecologically relevant scales

Nature Geoscience volume 16, pages 560–566 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

The decline of dissolved oxygen in the oceans could be detrimental to marine life and biogeochemical cycles. However, predicting future oxygen availability with models that mainly focus on temporal and spatial large-scale mean values could lead to incorrect predictions. Marine ecosystems are strongly influenced by short temporal- and small spatial-scale oxygen fluctuations. Large-scale modelling neglects fluctuations, which include the pervasive occurrence of high oxygen supersaturation on a daily time scale in productive ecosystems such as coral reefs, seagrass meadows and mangrove forests and the spatial heterogeneity in oxygen availability at microclimatic scales. In these temporal and spatial micro-environments, oxygen fluctuations control biogeochemical cycles and alter community responses to, for example, heat stress and hypoxia. Robust projections on the impact of predicted ocean and coastal deoxygenation require a better understanding of the dynamics of the dissolved oxygen coupled with scaled-down projections of oxygen fluctuations at small relevant scales for marine biogeochemical processes and communities. Overall, the study of the true oxygen dynamics in marine productive habitats can provide crucial insights into the feedback mechanisms between climate change and marine ecosystems and can help to develop effective management and conservation strategies.

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Fig. 1: Causes of heterogeneity in oxygen availability in marine environments.
Fig. 2: Pervasiveness of oxygen periodicity and supersaturation in diverse productive coastal habitats.

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Data availability

Data from the Red Sea were retrieved from Giomi et al.10. Data from Venice Lagoon are available from the hydrobiological station Umberto D’Ancona at Chioggia, Italy (https://chioggia.biologia.unipd.it/en/the-database/parameters-of-lagoon/2017/ and https://chioggia.biologia.unipd.it/en/the-database/parameters-of-lagoon/2018/). Data from the Balearic Islands were retrieved from ref. 49. All of the data have been collated and are available as Supplementary Data 1.

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Acknowledgements

This research was funded by King Abdullah University of Science and Technology through baseline funding to C.M.D. and D.D. and by a Competitive Research Grant (CRG-7-3739) to D.D. (The role of the bacterial symbiome at the gill–water (air) interface in the evolution towards terrestrialization (Microlanding); 1 April 2019 to 31 March 2022). We thank V. Saderne, R. Martinez, F. Lazaro, J. de la Cruz Martinez Ayala and P. Carrillo de Albornoz for assistance with the field work and data collection. We thank R. Marasco for critical revision of the manuscript. We are thankful to L. Sbaragli for critical revision of the abstract of the manuscript.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Padova, Italy

    Folco Giomi

  2. Department of Biology, University of Padova, Padova, Italy

    Alberto Barausse

  3. Computational Bioscience Research Center, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Thuwal, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

    Alexandra Steckbauer & Carlos M. Duarte

  4. Red Sea Research Cente, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Thuwal, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

    Alexandra Steckbauer, Daniele Daffonchio & Carlos M. Duarte

  5. Centre for Conservation and Restoration Science, School of Applied Sciences, Edinburgh Napier University, Edinburgh, UK

    Marco Fusi

  6. Joint Nature Conservation Committee, Peterborough, UK

    Marco Fusi

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  1. Folco Giomi
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Contributions

F.G. and M.F. conceived of the study. F.G., M.F., A.B. and A.S. analysed and interpreted the results. F.G., A.B. and M.F. wrote the first draft of the manuscript. All authors contributed to and approved the final version of the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Folco Giomi or Marco Fusi.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature Geoscience thanks Gil Jacinto, Lillian McCormick and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Primary Handling Editor(s): Rebecca Neely and James Super, in collaboration with the Nature Geoscience team.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Data 1

Dissolved oxygen and temperature data plotted in Figure 2. Published sources of data are indicated in Column E.

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Giomi, F., Barausse, A., Steckbauer, A. et al. Oxygen dynamics in marine productive ecosystems at ecologically relevant scales. Nat. Geosci. 16, 560–566 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-023-01217-z

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