Productivity of Marine Ecosystem Components

Abstract

The marine ecosystem is the greatest of all ecosystems. Marine ecosystems cover approximately seventy-one percent of the Earth's surface; moreover, they contain approximately ninety-seven percent of the planet's water. Thirty-two percent of the world's net primary production is generated by them. There are many marine ecosystems environmental problems, which include marine pollution, unsustainable exploitation of marine resources (as overfishing to certain species), building on coastal areas, and climate change. From the trophical standpoint, a marine ecosystem has two groups of components: autotrophic components and heterotrophic components. The primary or basic productivity of an ecosystem could be defined as the storing rate of radiant energy by producers (chemosynthetic and photosynthetic) activity as an organic substance that can be utilized as food. The productivity of marine ecosystem greatly refers to the organic matter production by producers or autotrophs “phytoplanktons and algae,” the produced organic carbon is supplied to “heterotrophs,” which obtain their energy only from the organic matter respiration. There are many carbon-nested cycles associated with marine productivity including Grass and Net Primary Productivity (GPP and NPP, respectively) as well as Net community and Secondary productivity (NCP and SP, respectively). Fisheries depend on secondary productivity; thus they rely on both Net primary productivity and the organic matter transferring efficiency to the food web. Environmental factors as well as the change of climate may strongly impact NPP in many ways that rely on the regional as well as local physical settings, ecosystem structure, and functioning medium.