Trajectories of nutrients concentrations and ratios in the French coastal ecosystems: 20 years of changes in relation with large-scale and local drivers.

Along with their important diversity, coastal ecosystems receive various amounts of nutrients, principally arising from the continent and from the related human activities (mainly industrial and agricultural activities). During the 20th century, nutrients loads have increased following the increase of both the global population and need of services. Alongside, climate change including temperature increase or atmospheric circulation change has occurred. These processes, Ecosystem state changes are hard to monitor and predict. To study the long-term changes of nutrients concentrations in coastal ecosystems, eleven French coastal ecosystems were studied over 20 years as they encompass large climatic and land pressures, representative of temperate ecosystems, over a rather small geographical area. Both univariate (time series decomposition) and multivariate (relationships between ecosystems and drivers) statistical analyses were used to determine ecosystem trajectories as well as typologies of ecosystem trajectories. It appeared that most of the French coastal ecosystems exhibited trajectories towards a decrease in nutrients concentrations. Differences in trajectories mainly depended on continental and human influences, as well as on climatic regimes. One single ecosystem exhibited very different trajectories, the Arcachon Bay with an increase in nutrients concentrations. Ecosystem trajectories based on ordination techniques were proven to be useful tools to monitor ecosystem changes. This study highlighted the importance of local environments and the need to couple uni- and multi-ecosystem studies. Although the studied ecosystems were influenced by both local and large-scale climate, by anthropogenic activities loads, and that their trajectories were mostly similar based on their continental influence, non-negligible variations resulted from their internal functioning.

A new method for nanomolar determination of silicic acid in seawater.

A novel method is proposed to determine concentrations of silicic acid in seawater in the nanomolar range of 3-500 nM. It preconcentrates silicic acid through a "Magnesium Induced Co-precipitation" (MAGIC) step before a classical spectrophotometric measurement. The detection limit (3+/-2 nM) is improved by a factor 10 in comparison to the conventional colorimetric methods. The best precision obtained to date is +/-2 nM for a natural sample of 69 nM Si. No interference of phosphate was observed by contrast to previous methods. This simple method offers a simple, sensitive and accurate tool for silicic acid determination in depleted seawater, where its availability remains unknown.