Two decades of carbonate budget change on shifted coral reef assemblages: are these reefs being locked into low net budget states?
Molina-Hernández, A; González-Barrios, FJ; Perry, CT; et al.Alvarez-Filip, L
Date: 9 December 2020
Article
Journal
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Publisher
Royal Society
Publisher DOI
Abstract
The ecology of coral reefs is rapidly shifting from historical baselines. One key-question is
whether under these new, less favorable ecological conditions, coral reefs will be able to
sustain key geo-ecological processes such as the capacity to accumulate carbonate
structure. Here, we use data from 34 Caribbean reef sites to ...
The ecology of coral reefs is rapidly shifting from historical baselines. One key-question is
whether under these new, less favorable ecological conditions, coral reefs will be able to
sustain key geo-ecological processes such as the capacity to accumulate carbonate
structure. Here, we use data from 34 Caribbean reef sites to examine how the carbonate
production, net erosion, and net carbonate budgets, as well as the organisms underlying
these processes, have changed over the past 15 years in the absence of further severe
acute disturbances. We find that despite fundamental benthic ecological changes, these
ecologically shifted coral assemblages have exhibited a modest but significant increase in
their net carbonate budgets over the past 15 years. However, contrary to expectations this
trend was driven by a decrease in erosion pressure, largely resulting from changes in the
abundance and size-frequency distribution of parrotfishes, and not by an increase in rates
of coral carbonate production. Although in the short term the carbonate budgets seem to
have benefitted marginally from reduced parrotfish erosion, the absence of these key
substrate grazers, particularly of larger individuals, is unlikely to be conducive to reef
recovery and will thus likely lock these reefs into low budget states.
Geography - old structure
Collections of Former Colleges
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