Evidence of ecosystem response to the interannual environmental variability in the Taiwan Strait

By comparing remote sensing sea surface temperature and in situ chemical and biological dat a collected since 1985,some evidences of ecosystem variation responding to interannual environmental variability were found in the Taiwan Strait.Owing to incomplete extensive and serial biological observations,the eco-system responses were mainly illustrated by two specific cases.Coastal upwelling weakened in the summer of 1997,when the Taiwan Strait was during a cold phase.Cold Zhe-Min coastal water weakened and northward intrusion of warm water was streng thened in the winter of 1997,while it was the peak of a strong warm episode of the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea.During these two periods,nutrient distribution,phytoplankt on and zooplankt on abundance and community structure altered and showed anomaly.El Nino seemed weakly linking to the Taiwan Strait.It was hypothesized that forcing within the East Asia monsoon-China marginal sea system might the dominant mechanism.To achieve better understanding of how the Taiwan Strait ecosystem responds to climate variations,supporting the long-term physicalevidences and serial biotic variation signals observation are especially needed.