TY - DATA ID - buitenhuis2012gdop T1 - Global distributions of picophytoplankton abundance and biomass - Gridded data product (NetCDF) - Contribution to the MAREDAT World Ocean Atlas of Plankton Functional Types AU - Buitenhuis, Erik Theodoor AU - Li, William K W AU - Vaulot, D AU - Lomas, Michael W AU - Landry, M R AU - Partensky, Frédéric AU - Karl, David Michael AU - Ulloa, Osvaldo AU - Campbell, L AU - Jacquet, Stéphan AU - Lantoine, F AU - Chavez, Francisco P AU - Macias, D AU - Gosselin, M AU - McManus, George B PY - 2012/03/10/ PB - PANGAEA DO - 10.1594/PANGAEA.777385 UR - https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.777385 N2 - The smallest marine phytoplankton, collectively termed picophytoplankton, have been routinely enumerated by flow cytometry since the late 1980s, during cruises throughout most of the world ocean. We compiled a database of 40,946 data points, with separate abundance entries for Prochlorococcus, Synechococcus and picoeukaryotes. We use average conversion factors for each of the three groups to convert the abundance data to carbon biomass. After gridding with 1° spacing, the database covers 2.4% of the ocean surface area, with the best data coverage in the North Atlantic, the South Pacific and North Indian basins. The average picophytoplankton biomass is 12 ± 22 µg C L-1 or 1.9 g C m-2. We estimate a total global picophytoplankton biomass, excluding N2-fixers, of 0.53 - 0.74 Pg C (17 - 39 % Prochlorococcus, 12 - 15 % Synechococcus and 49 - 69 % picoeukaryotes). Future efforts in this area of research should focus on reporting calibrated cell size, and collecting data in undersampled regions. ER -