Spatio-temporal distribution and biogeochemical role of phytoplankton communities: Insights from autonomous bio-optical observations

My research investigates the structure and spatio-temporal variability of phytoplankton communities, which are central to marine food webs and the regulation of the oceanic biological carbon pump. I use a combination of satellite ocean color data and in situ measurements from research vessels and BioGeoChemical-Argo (BGC-Argo) profiling floats to study how these communities respond to environmental variability and how they, in turn, influence carbon fluxes in both the global ocean and region-specific regimes, such as the Mediterranean Sea and the Southern Ocean. Over the past years, my work has addressed several key questions: How do bio-optical properties vary across oceanic regimes, and how do these variations affect the interpretation of autonomous observations? How can we infer phytoplankton diversity from bio-optical observations to better understand the temporal and vertical dynamics of phytoplankton communities? What are the patterns and biogeochemical significance of deep chlorophyll maxima in stratified oligotrophic systems? Finally, how can we integrate satellite and in situ observations to produce 3D global fields of phytoplankton community biomass and composition? Building on previous work, my research project focuses on the Southern Ocean, a climatically critical region exhibiting diverse biogeochemical regimes. This project aims to understand how environmental forcing affects phytoplankton bloom phenology, community structure, and the cascading impacts on trophic interactions and carbon fluxes. It combines novel observations from a new generation of BGC-Argo floats, ship-based data, and machine learning–derived biogeochemical products. This interdisciplinary approach will contribute to reducing uncertainties in predicting the Southern Ocean's response to climate change.