A phytoplankton community was sampled monthly between February 1978 and January 1980 in a coastal area of the Eastern Channel. During each croise, measurements of several physico-chemical and biological factors were also carried out. This data basis permitted the description of the ecosystem's behaviour in a synthetic manner by inertia analysis techniques, which draw up an ordination of the components of the spatio-temporal variability of the coastal pelagie biotope. For the given time-and space-steps of our sampling strategy, it is shown that the major source of variation is seasonal. This determines the preferential observational scale of the study, whose aim is the analysis 'Of the variability of the low-frequency processes of primary productivity. The... |