Environmental controls on modern scleractinian coral and reef-scale calcification.

ABSTRACT: Modern reef-building corals sustain a wide range of ecosystem services because of their ability to build calcium carbonate reef systems. The influence of environmental variables on coral calcification rates has been extensively studied, but our understanding of their relative importance is limited by the absence of in situ observations and the ability to decouple the interactions between different properties. We show that temperature is the primary driver of coral colony (Porites astreoides and Diploria labyrinthiformis) and reef-scale calcification rates over a 2-year monitoring period from the Bermuda coral reef. On the basis of multimodel climate simulations (Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5) and assuming sufficient coral nutrition, our results suggest that

SUBMITTER: Courtney TA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5677334 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature