Towards the Nitrate Balancing of the Mediterranean Sea: Perspective Through Combination of Loads Estimates and Ecosystem Modelling

The different behaviour of the Mediterranean ecosystem is investigated in presence of realistic riverine inputs and dissolved organic matter exchange. The strategy is to fulfill the stability condition of the internal ecosystem in the case of different atmospheric inputs. To this aim, the three-dimensional ecomodel, based on Dissolved Inorganic Nitrogen (N), Phytoplankton (P), Zooplankton (Z) and Detritus (D), developed for the description of the ecological processes in the oligotrophic Mediterranean Sea at 1/8 degree discretization is employed. Temporal and spatial variability of biomass and chlorophyll horizontal and vertical sections are analysed. Results are shown and compared in order to appreciate the effects of inorganic matter input only versus nitrogen apport divided among its inorganic and organic components.