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Article: Linking planktonic biomass and metabolism to net gas fluxes in northern temperate lakes.
- Article from:
- Ecology
- Article date:
- June 1, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 Ecological Society of America. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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INTRODUCTION
Ecologists have traditionally recognized that the biomass structure is one of the fundamental attributes of ecosystems (Odum 1971). It is thought that the shape of the biomass pyramid summarizes not only the structure of communities, but also integrates functional attributes of communities, such as patterns of organic carbon and energy flow, transfer efficiency and turnover of different components of the food web (Odum 197 I, Reichle 1981). Across a large-scale productivity gradient there is a general shift in the shape of the biomass pyramid, from normal pyramids with very broad bases in forests to pyramids with increasingly smaller autotrophic ...