Predicting coral dynamics through climate change.

ABSTRACT: Thermal-stress events are changing the composition of many coral reefs worldwide. Yet, determining the rates of coral recovery and their long-term responses to increasing sea-surface temperatures is challenging. To do so, we first estimated coral recovery rates following past disturbances on reefs in southern Japan and Western Australia. Recovery rates varied between regions, with the reefs in southern Japan showing more rapid recovery rates (intrinsic rate of increase, r = 0.38 year-1) than reefs in Western Australia (r = 0.17 year-1). Second, we input these recovery rates into a novel, nonlinear hybrid-stochastic-dynamical system to predict the responses of Indo-Pacific coral populations to complex inter-annual temperature cycles into the year 2100. The coral recovery rates were overlaid

SUBMITTER: Woesik RV 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6301976 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature