Inherent optical properties of suspended particulate matter in the southern Baltic Sea in relation to the concentration, composition and characteristics of the particle size distribution; new forms of multicomponent parameterizations of optical properties

Abstract

This paper reports on detailed studies of the relationship between the inherent optical properties (IOPs) of suspended particulate matter populations occurring in southern Baltic Sea waters, and the basic biogeochemical and morphological quantities enabling these populations to be generally characterized. Specifically, these IOPs are the spectral absorption coefficients by all particulate matter, phytoplankton pigments and detritus, the spectral scattering and backscattering coefficients by particles, and the backscattering ratio. The biogeochemical properties of suspended matter populations are characterized by measuring concentrations of suspended particulate matter (SPM), particulate organic matter (POM) and particulate inorganic matter (PIM), as well as concentrations of various phytoplankton pigments, including chlorophyll a (Chla). We also take particle size distributions (PSDs) into account. This diverse empirical material is used to describe how the typical relationships between the IOPs of suspended matter and the concentrations of the main water constituents (SPM or Chla) can be influenced by differences in the general composition and size distributions of the suspended matter. We statistically describe the possible impact on these relationships of the variability of composition ratios, such as POM/SPM and Chla/SPM, as well as the impact of the variability of certain characteristics calculated on the basis of PSDs: the average particle diameter weighted by the particle's projected area (D_A), the average apparent density of particles (ρ_a), the average intracellular concentration of chlorophyll a (c_i), and the corresponding products of these quantities. We also demonstrate the significant variability of the specific IOPs (SIOPs) by attempting to determine them in the classical way for our southern Baltic data, and we give a possible interpretation of this variability. On the basis of these analyses, we derive new, multicomponent IOP parameterizations that are functions of several variables. These new parameterizations enable the IOPs of suspended matter to be characterized and predicted with better accuracy than with the often-used standard one-component relationships.