The Radiocarbon Method to Estimate Primary Production in Aquatic Environments

Abstract

The term primary production means the photosynthetic production of new organic matter from carbon of CO₂ and hydrocarbonates by aquatic plants (Winberg 1960). Primary production is the basic source of external energy input into most aquatic ecosystems. Therefore, any attempt to estimate or model their energy balances first needs adequate evaluation of the size of primary production. The parameters of primary production per day and per whole season are a fundamental characteristic of the trophical status of a given water body and its ecological state (Margalef 1965). In fact, measurements of primary production have become a basic analysis to any serious hydrobiological investigation to obtain general characteristics of aquatic ecosystems and evaluate the degree of their anthropogenic transformation. Special attention was paid to estimating primary production in the oceans. These data are needed to calculate the carbon budget of the Earth in face of the greenhouse phenomenon. Therefore the development of efficient, rapid, and adequate methods of primary production measurement in aquatic environments was, and in some sense still remains, one of the key problems in hydrobiology.