Responses of the ocean planktonic ecosystem to finite‐amplitude perturbations

Abstract

The responses of the ocean planktonic ecosystem to finite-amplitude perturbations are investigated using an ocean planktonic ecosystem model. Through changing the higher predation rate on zooplankton, multiple equilibria of the model, namely ''high-nutrient'' and ''low-nutrient'' states, are obtained under certain parameter values. Based on these states, the perturbations with maximum nonlinear growth are determined using the conditional nonlinear optimal perturbation (CNOP) method. The linear and nonlinear evolutions of the CNOP perturbation are compared. The results show that the nonlinear evolution of the perturbation leads to predator-prey oscillations with larger amplitude than the linear evolution. Besides, after the perturbation amplitude exceeds a critical value, the nonlinear evolution of the perturbation will induce the linearly stable ecosystem state to lose the stability and become nonlinearly unstable. This implies that nonlinear processes have important impacts on the stability of the ecosystem. Specifically, we identify the nonlinear processes related to zooplankton grazing to impact the stability most for the high-nutrient state, while for the low-nutrient state the main nonlinear process affecting the stability is the uptake process. These results help to improve our understanding of the sensitivity of the oceanic ecosystem model to finite-amplitude perturbations and the underlying nonlinear stability properties.