Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Chlorophylls and their Degradation
in Nature
Khan M. G. Mostofa, Cong-qiang Liu, Xiangliang Pan, Davide Vione,
Kazuhide Hayakawa, Takahito Yoshioka and Gennady G. Komissarov
1 Introduction
Phytoplankton are responsible for approximately 40-50 % of the total primary
production on Earth. They contribute to controlling the total CO
2
concentration
and pH of the ocean, which together with physical processes (e.g. solar energy
input, sea-air heat exchanges, upwelling of subsurface waters and mixed layer
thickness) dictates the air-to-sea CO
2
gas exchanges (Longhurst et al.
1995
; Field
et al.
1998
; Takahashi et al.
2002
; Falkowski et al.
2004
). The global net primary
production from phytoplankton is 45-50 Gt C year
−
1
, whilst from land plants
