Predicting coral dynamics through climate change

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 i...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Scientific reports 2018-12, Vol.8 (1), p.17997-10, Article 17997
Main Authors: Woesik, Robert van, Köksal, Semen, Ünal, Arzu, Cacciapaglia, Chris W., Randall, Carly J.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
704/158/1144
704/158/2165
Animals
Anthozoa - classification
Anthozoa - growth & development
Climate Change
Coral Reefs
Ecosystem
Environmental Monitoring
Humanities and Social Sciences
Japan
multidisciplinary
Ocean temperature
Population Dynamics
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Sea surface temperature
Seawater - analysis
Stochasticity
Temperature
Temperature effects
Western Australia
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Summary: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 on background increases in global sea-surface temperatures, under three different climate-change scenarios. The models predicted rapid recovery at both localities with the infrequent and low-magnitude temperature anomalies expected under a conservative climate-change scenario, Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 4.5. With moderate increases in ocean temperatures (RCP 6.0) the coral populations showed a bimodal response, with model runs showing either recovery or collapse. Under a business-as-usual climate-change scenario (RCP 8.5), with frequent and intense temperature anomalies, coral recovery was unlikely.
ISSN:2045-2322
2045-2322
DOI:10.1038/s41598-018-36169-7