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Australian researchers recently reported a sharp decline in the abundance of coral along the Great Barrier Reef. Scientists are seeing similar declines in coral colonies throughout the world, including reefs off of Hawaii, the Florida Keys and in the Indo-Pacific region.
The widespread decline is fueled in part by climate-driven heat waves that are warming the world s oceans and leading to what s known as coral bleaching, the breakdown of the mutually beneficial relationship between corals and resident algae.
But other factors are contributing to the decline of coral reefs, as well, including pollution and overfishing.
According to a new study, Local conditions magnify coral loss after marine heatwaves, published in the journal
How we can help coral and seabirds survive a warming world
Reducing CO2 emissions is crucial, but there are hands-on ways to protect animals from inevitable warming.
ByTim Vernimmen
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Global warming is not just increasing average temperatures on land, it’s heating up the oceans as well. As marine heat waves become more common, they are disrupting longstanding relationships between species that have come to depend on each other.
Corals may lose the algae living inside of them, causing them to bleach, or even die, often after being hit by more than one heat wave. Large schools of fish move to more comfortable climes, forcing the seabirds that need them to feed their young to fly much longer distances from the shores where their kind has been nesting for ages.
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Local management of coral reefs to ease environmental stressors, such as overfishing or pollution, could increase reefs chances of recovery after devastating coral bleaching events caused by climate change, a new study finds. The results suggest that caring for reefs on a local scale might help them persist globally. When waters warm, corals can die quickly and en masse in coral bleaching events. Marine warming due to climate change has resulted in sharp increases in both the frequency and magnitude of these mass mortality events, which have already caused severe damage to reefs worldwide. Because of the global nature of coral bleaching, many studies argue that mitigating climate change is the only way to ensure the survival of these sensitive ecosystems. Occasionally, however, surviving corals rebound after bleaching events, and reefs recover. It s unknown whether local reef management strategies play a role in this resilience. Mary Donovan and colleagues evaluated data f