9311312 BIDIGARE The northern Arabian Sea exhibits regular, predictable oscillations in phytoplankton biomass and production driven by monsoonal atmospheric forcing. In this project, the principal investigator will characterize phytoplankton pigment distributions during the Arabian Sea Process Study (ASPS) using state-of-the-art high- performance liquid chromatography (HLPC) methods. There are four major research objectives. Seasonal and spatial pigment data will be used (1) to document phytoplankton biomass (as chlorophyll-a) and species composition of pigments and other variables and (4) use the model to estimate time-and-depth-dependent rates of primary production. This work will complement the efforts of other ASPS investigators studying phytoplankton dynamics both by water column sampling and via satellite imagery.
