Spatial Scales of Current Speed and Phytoplankton Biomass Fluctuations in Lake Tahoe

Spectral analysis of current speed and chlorophyll a measurements in Lake Tahoe, California and Nevada, indicates that considerably more variance exists at longer length scales in chlorophyll than in the current speeds. Increasingly, above scales of approximately 100 meters, chlorophyll does not behave as a simple passive contaminant distributed by turbulence, which indicates that biological processes contribute significantly to the observed variance at these large length scales.

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