Forms and Variability of Phosphorus in the Baltic Sea—A Challenge to Ecosystem Modeling

Knowledge of the partitioning between the dissolved and particulate phases of nutrient elements is a key factor in aquatic ecosystem modeling since partitioning regulates the availability to demand ratio of the nutrient in question. This is seldom taken into account in environmental monitoring programs. In this paper, the occurrence and variability of particulate and dissolved phosphorus were studied in the coastal zone of the Baltic Sea. The particulate fraction (PF) of total phosphorus (TP) concentration in coastal waters from some forty stations along the east coast of Sweden was, on average, 0.33. Dissolved inorganic phosphorus (DIP) was a poor predictor of total dissolved phosphorus (DP) representing only 20%–30% of this fraction. Sensitivity analyses showed that the value of PF had a significant impact on modeled predictions of TP concentration in the water on a Baltic sub-basin scale, whereas an applied coastal model was insensitive to variations in PF. Hence, this study encourages further sampling efforts on the partitioning of phosphorus in the open waters of the Baltic Sea.