Articles | Volume 21, issue 2
https://doi.org/10.5194/os-21-679-2025
© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/os-21-679-2025
© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Research article
| Highlight paper
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20 Mar 2025
Research article | Highlight paper |
| 20 Mar 2025
| 20 Mar 2025
Decadal changes in phytoplankton functional composition in the Eastern English Channel: possible upcoming major effects of climate change
Zéline Hubert
CORRESPONDING AUTHOR
Université Littoral Côte d'Opale, Université de Lille, CNRS, IRD, UMR 8187 LOG, Laboratoire d'Océanologie et de Géosciences, 62930 Wimereux, France
Arnaud P. Louchart
Université Littoral Côte d'Opale, Université de Lille, CNRS, IRD, UMR 8187 LOG, Laboratoire d'Océanologie et de Géosciences, 62930 Wimereux, France
Department of Aquatic Ecology, the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW), Droevendaalsesteeg 10, 6708 PB Wageningen, the Netherlands
Kévin Robache
Université Littoral Côte d'Opale, Université de Lille, CNRS, IRD, UMR 8187 LOG, Laboratoire d'Océanologie et de Géosciences, 62930 Wimereux, France
Alexandre Epinoux
Université Littoral Côte d'Opale, Université de Lille, CNRS, IRD, UMR 8187 LOG, Laboratoire d'Océanologie et de Géosciences, 62930 Wimereux, France
Clémentine Gallot
Université Littoral Côte d'Opale, Université de Lille, CNRS, IRD, UMR 8187 LOG, Laboratoire d'Océanologie et de Géosciences, 62930 Wimereux, France
Mediterranean Institute of Oceanography (MIO), Campus de Luminy, 163 Av. de Luminy, 13288 Marseille CEDEX 9, France
Vincent Cornille
Université Littoral Côte d'Opale, Université de Lille, CNRS, IRD, UMR 8187 LOG, Laboratoire d'Océanologie et de Géosciences, 62930 Wimereux, France
Laboratoire Ressources Halieutiques, Ifremer, 150 quai Gambetta, 62321 Boulogne-sur-Mer, France
Muriel Crouvoisier
Université Littoral Côte d'Opale, Université de Lille, CNRS, IRD, UMR 8187 LOG, Laboratoire d'Océanologie et de Géosciences, 62930 Wimereux, France
Sébastien Monchy
Université Littoral Côte d'Opale, Université de Lille, CNRS, IRD, UMR 8187 LOG, Laboratoire d'Océanologie et de Géosciences, 62930 Wimereux, France
Luis Felipe Artigas
CORRESPONDING AUTHOR
Université Littoral Côte d'Opale, Université de Lille, CNRS, IRD, UMR 8187 LOG, Laboratoire d'Océanologie et de Géosciences, 62930 Wimereux, France
Related authors
Zéline Hubert, Aurélie Libeau, Clémentine Gallot, Vincent Cornille, Muriel Crouvoisier, Eric Lecuyer, and Luis Felipe Artigas
Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2025-131, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2025-131, 2025
Preprint under review for ESSD
Short summary
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Long-term phytoplankton monitoring is key to understanding marine systems. This study presents a decade of observations along a coastal-offshore transect in the Strait of Dover using automated in vivo methods. Since 2012, phytoplankton groups have been analyzed via multi-spectral fluorometry and flow cytometry, alongside biogeochemical and hydrological measurements. This dataset offers valuable insights into phytoplankton dynamics and environmental drivers in a temperate coastal system.
Kévin Robache, Zéline Hubert, Clémentine Gallot, Alexandre Epinoux, Arnaud P. Louchart, Jean-Valéry Facq, Alain Lefebvre, Michel Répécaud, Vincent Cornille, Florine Verhaeghe, Yann Audinet, Laurent Brutier, François G. Schmitt, and Luis Felipe Artigas
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-836, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-836, 2025
This preprint is open for discussion and under review for Ocean Science (OS).
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By deploying an automated flow cytometer on a coastal monitoring station in France, we tracked phytoplankton changes every 2 hours during spring (2021, 2022) and summer (2022). Our study revealed distinct seasonal shifts, e.g., with diatoms and haptophytes in spring. Extreme weather events rapidly altered community composition. We found that most variability occurred on short timescales, underscoring the importance of high-frequency monitoring to understand marine phytoplankton dynamics.
Zéline Hubert, Aurélie Libeau, Clémentine Gallot, Vincent Cornille, Muriel Crouvoisier, Eric Lecuyer, and Luis Felipe Artigas
Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2025-131, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2025-131, 2025
Preprint under review for ESSD
Short summary
Short summary
Long-term phytoplankton monitoring is key to understanding marine systems. This study presents a decade of observations along a coastal-offshore transect in the Strait of Dover using automated in vivo methods. Since 2012, phytoplankton groups have been analyzed via multi-spectral fluorometry and flow cytometry, alongside biogeochemical and hydrological measurements. This dataset offers valuable insights into phytoplankton dynamics and environmental drivers in a temperate coastal system.
Kévin Robache, Zéline Hubert, Clémentine Gallot, Alexandre Epinoux, Arnaud P. Louchart, Jean-Valéry Facq, Alain Lefebvre, Michel Répécaud, Vincent Cornille, Florine Verhaeghe, Yann Audinet, Laurent Brutier, François G. Schmitt, and Luis Felipe Artigas
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-836, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-836, 2025
This preprint is open for discussion and under review for Ocean Science (OS).
Short summary
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By deploying an automated flow cytometer on a coastal monitoring station in France, we tracked phytoplankton changes every 2 hours during spring (2021, 2022) and summer (2022). Our study revealed distinct seasonal shifts, e.g., with diatoms and haptophytes in spring. Extreme weather events rapidly altered community composition. We found that most variability occurred on short timescales, underscoring the importance of high-frequency monitoring to understand marine phytoplankton dynamics.
Kévin Robache, François G. Schmitt, and Yongxiang Huang
Nonlin. Processes Geophys., 32, 35–49, https://doi.org/10.5194/npg-32-35-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/npg-32-35-2025, 2025
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In this work, the multiscale dynamics of 38 oceanic and atmospheric pCO2 time series, sea surface temperature data, and salinity data from fixed buoys recorded with 3 h resolution are considered. The Fourier scaling exponents are estimated. The differences found for three ecosystems – coastal shelf, coral reefs and open ocean – are discussed. Multifractal properties of pCO2 difference between ocean and atmosphere are found and characterized over the scale range from 3 h to 1 year.
Clare Ostle, Kevin Paxman, Carolyn A. Graves, Mathew Arnold, Luis Felipe Artigas, Angus Atkinson, Anaïs Aubert, Malcolm Baptie, Beth Bear, Jacob Bedford, Michael Best, Eileen Bresnan, Rachel Brittain, Derek Broughton, Alexandre Budria, Kathryn Cook, Michelle Devlin, George Graham, Nick Halliday, Pierre Hélaouët, Marie Johansen, David G. Johns, Dan Lear, Margarita Machairopoulou, April McKinney, Adam Mellor, Alex Milligan, Sophie Pitois, Isabelle Rombouts, Cordula Scherer, Paul Tett, Claire Widdicombe, and Abigail McQuatters-Gollop
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 13, 5617–5642, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-13-5617-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-13-5617-2021, 2021
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Plankton form the base of the marine food web and are sensitive indicators of environmental change. The Plankton Lifeform Extraction Tool brings together disparate plankton datasets into a central database from which it extracts abundance time series of plankton functional groups, called
lifeforms, according to shared biological traits. This tool has been designed to make complex plankton datasets accessible and meaningful for policy, public interest, and scientific discovery.
Xabier Davila, Anna Rubio, Luis Felipe Artigas, Ingrid Puillat, Ivan Manso-Narvarte, Pascal Lazure, and Ainhoa Caballero
Ocean Sci., 17, 849–870, https://doi.org/10.5194/os-17-849-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/os-17-849-2021, 2021
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The ocean is a turbulent system, full of meandering currents and fronts of various scales. These processes can influence the distribution of microscopic algae or phytoplankton by upwelling deep, nutrient-rich waters to the sunlit surface or by actively gathering and accumulating them. Our results suggest that, at the surface, salinity is the main conditioning factor for phytoplankton distribution. However, at the subsurface, oceanic currents influence phytoplankton distribution the most.
M. Thyssen, S. Alvain, A. Lefèbvre, D. Dessailly, M. Rijkeboer, N. Guiselin, V. Creach, and L.-F. Artigas
Biogeosciences, 12, 4051–4066, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-12-4051-2015, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-12-4051-2015, 2015
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Phytoplankton community structure at a high spatial resolution (<3km) was studied in the North Sea during a cruise in May 2011. A first comparison with PHYSAT reflectance anomalies enables the extrapolation of the community structure rather than a dominant type at the North Sea scale and was interpreted with its hydrological characteristics. This will seriously improve our understanding of the influence of community structure on biogeochemical processes at the daily and basin scales.
C. Georges, S. Monchy, S. Genitsaris, and U. Christaki
Biogeosciences, 11, 5847–5863, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-11-5847-2014, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-11-5847-2014, 2014
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Co-editor-in-chief
This is an original study on a on a coastal ecosystem, combining environmental data with data on phytoplankton functional groups. Such a time series on flow cytometry in combination with environmental data at high temporal resolution over multiple years is relatively rare and can give a detailed view into the variability of the phytoplankton community over the last decade. This is the first pluri-annual study of the whole size-range of the phytoplankton community characterized by one unique method.
This is an original study on a on a coastal ecosystem, combining environmental data with data on...
Short summary
This study provides the first assessment of decadal changes in the whole phytoplankton community, addressed by flow cytometry, in the highly productive waters of the Strait of Dover. A significant surface seawater temperature increase of 1°C, associated with an important change in the nutrient concentration and balance, has triggered a change in the phytoplankton communities, characterized by a higher total abundance and an increasing proportion of the smallest cells (picroeukaryotes and picocyanobacteria).
This study provides the first assessment of decadal changes in the whole phytoplankton...
