Coral bleaching response index: a new tool to standardize and compare susceptibility to thermal bleaching.

ABSTRACT: As coral bleaching events become more frequent and intense, our ability to predict and mitigate future events depends upon our capacity to interpret patterns within previous episodes. Responses to thermal stress vary among coral species; however the diversity of coral assemblages, environmental conditions, assessment protocols, and severity criteria applied in the global effort to document bleaching patterns creates challenges for the development of a systemic metric of taxon-specific response. Here, we describe and validate a novel framework to standardize bleaching response records and estimate their measurement uncertainties. Taxon-specific bleaching and mortality records (2036) of 374 coral taxa (during 1982-2006) at 316 sites were standardized to average percent tissue area affected a

SUBMITTER: Swain TD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5433437 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature