Eur. Phys. J. Plus (2022) 137: 184
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/s13360-022-02396-1

Regular Article

Three-dimensional turbulence effects on plankton dynamics behind an obstacle

¹ CNRS, UMR 7190, Institut Jean Le Rond d’Alembert, Sorbonne Université, 75005, Paris, France
² Univ. Lille, ULR 7512, Unité de Mécanique de Lille Joseph Boussinesq (UML), 59000, Lille, France

^a alice.jaccod@upmc.fr

Received: 3 November 2021
Accepted: 14 January 2022
Published online: 28 January 2022

Abstract

We study a predator–prey model of plankton dynamics in the two and three-dimensional wakes of turbulent flows behind a cylinder, focusing on the impact of the three-dimensional character of the carrying velocity field on population variance spectra and spatial distributions. By means of direct numerical simulations, we find that the qualitative behavior of the biological dynamics is mostly independent of the space dimensionality, which suggests that only the relation between the typical flow and biological timescales is crucial to observe persistent blooms. Similarly, in both cases, we find that the spectral properties of the planktonic populations are essentially indistinguishable from those of an inert tracer. The main difference arising from the comparison of the two- and three-dimensional configurations concerns the local spatial distribution of plankton density fields. Indeed, the three-dimensional turbulent dynamics tend to destroy the localized coherent structures characterizing the two-dimensional flow, in which the planktonic species are mostly concentrated, thus reducing the phytoplankton biomass in the system.