Intro to oceans - Hilary online test compilation C - Flashcards in University Marine Science

1. Which of the following statements is FALSE?

Measuring chlorophyll concentrations is used to track zooplankton
An increase in the turbidity (presence of particles)of seawater, reduces the depth to which sunlight can penetrate
Net nutrient removal is seen in the sunlit surface waters where the rate of photosynthesis exceeds the rate of respiration.
At depths where light to too low, respiration dominates and changes in the concentration of dissolved nutrients is dominated by an increase in their concentration.

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The oldest bottom waters are in the North Pacific and so we should expect them to be most impoverished in dissolved oxygen
Dissolved oxygen display s non-conservative behaviour in seawater.
Only half the elements found in the periodic table are found dissolved in seawater
Profiles for scavenged elements show that their concentration decreases with depth.

A constituent with an oceanic residence time of 100 years will be uniformly mixed throughout the oceans
That the chemical composition of the oceans is in steady state means that the rate of addition of dissolved constituents to seawater is balanced by their rate of removal, so that their concentrations do not change significantly with time.
The major ions in seawater have a residence time longer than average ocean mixing time.
The residence time of an element in seawater can be estimated by dividing its mass in the ocean by its annual input from rivers.

The deep oceans are poorly supplied with oxygen by the advection of deep water masses that were formed in the polar regions.
Variations in temperature affect the overall constancy of composition of seawater with respect to major constituents.
The majority of the dissolved constituents participate in repeated cycles of biological activity that removes elements from solution and returns them to solution many times before they end up in the sediment
Elements classified as recycled have concentration profiles resembling those of scavenged elements.