The utility of the light-saturation curve as a tool to quantify effects of environmental conditions on the specific production rate of phytoplankton is assessed by comparing it with the more traditional approach which consists of directly relating the instantaneous rate of photosynthesis to the major factors believed to be affecting it.The internal consistency of data was tested by calculating the functional regression between measured and calculated values of the in situ production rate.Slope and y-intercept of the regression were not significantly different from slope 1 and y-intercept 0 (r = 0.89, P < 0.1 %).The light-curve method is shown to lead to a better understanding of the factors controlling the photosynthetic activity of phytoplankton in their natural environn~ent.In particular it is shown that whereas changes in the pattern of photosynthesis (aB, P 3 emphasized the profound effect that transient physical phenomena (passage of storms, periods of upwelling, etc.) had on the short-term dynamics of the phytoplankton production system, changes in the instantaneous rate of photosynthesis, PB(I) did not.
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Côté et al. (1984) studied this question.