Sensitivity of the Mediterranean Ecosystem to Nutrient Deposition: An Interdisciplinary Review

Homogeneous methods for ecological applications to the nutrient cycle are analyzed, and the results are presented according to the marine ecology work discussed. To do justice to the explanations, the materials are summarized, and the methods are discussed and improved for both interested readers and experts in the field. Both the materials and the methods serve informative and popularizing as well as applicable and interpretive purposes and, in order to achieve the widest possible dissemination, are shared under the strict supervision of the earlier individual publications discussed here. The aeolian syntheses quantify the impact of atmospheric deposition of nutrients in the Western Mediterranean as one-twentieth of the baseline vertical fluxes of organic matter, while estimates for the Eastern Mediterranean reach one-eighth. Possible changes and additions in the global ocean are discussed as well as ecosystem updates and their relevance to the specific orography, hydrology and geochemistry associated with the lower trophodynamic degrees of freedom. Finally, the dynamics of the basins are analyzed, with increasing nutrient inputs leading to a top-down control of net plankton growth in the western basin and to an extremely nutrient-poor state in the eastern basin.