Scaling-up coral reef carbonate production: Sea-urchin bioerosion suppresses reef growth in Hawai'i.

ABSTRACT: Coral reefs provide essential social, economic, and ecological services for millions of people worldwide. Yet, climate change and local anthropogenic stressors are damaging reefs globally, compromising their framework-building capacity and associated functionality. A reef carbonate budget provides a quantitative measure of growth and functional status, but utilization of remote sensing to scale-up such a metric remains limited. This study used census-based field surveys across depths in Hōnaunau Bay, Hawai'i to examine rates of carbonate production, and scaled-up estimates across the bay with high-resolution benthic-cover data derived from airborne imaging spectroscopy. Average net carbonate production was ~0.5 kg CaCO3 m-2 y-1 across the 2-17 m depth gradient, ranging from -2.1 to 2.4 kg

SUBMITTER: van Woesik KJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12118839 | biostudies-literature | 2025

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature