310.676.9697
310.676.9699 | fax
By carefully chronicling life on the coral reefs off the Caribbean island of St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands every year for the past 30 years, California State University, Northridge marine biologist Peter Edmunds has been able to track which corals have survived the ravages of hurricanes and the impact of climate changes, and which have not, and gain insight into the future of the reef.
What Edmunds has found that those populations of coral that have survived cannot produce as much carbonate rock as those that have died off. Coral calcification is the rate at which reef-building corals lay down their calcium carbonate skeleton. It is a measure of coral growth, which is important for healthy reef systems, and to build the wave-resistant platforms protecting shores and providing homes to countless animals and algae.
“While the corals remaining are keeping the reef alive, we just don’t know how long these really weedy coral can keep it up,” Edmunds said.
The results of his research, “Decadal-scale variation in coral calcification on coral-depleted Caribbean reefs,” were published today in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series. His co-author is Chris Perry, a professor of tropical coastal geoscience at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom.
Click HERE to read more.
