Physical and biological drivers of coral-reef dynamics
Aronson, R.B.; Precht, W.F. (2016). Physical and biological drivers of coral-reef dynamics, in: Hubbard, D. et al. Coral reefs at the crossroads. Coral Reefs of the World, 6: pp. 261-275. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-7567-0_11
In: Coral Reefs of the World. Springer: Dordrecht. ISSN 2213-719X, more
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| Keywords |
ASW, Caribbean
Climate change
Acropora Oken, 1815 [WoRMS]
Caribbean Sea [Marine Regions]
Marine/Coastal |
| Author keywords |
Coral bleaching; Coral disease; Marine protected areas; MPAs; White-band disease |
| Authors | | Top |
- Aronson, R.B.
- Precht, W.F.
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| Abstract |
Coral-reef ecosystems are declining worldwide, compromising their capacity to provide ecosystem services that include feeding hundreds of millions of people and protecting shorelines from erosion. The anthropogenic causes of reef degradation are complex and operate over a broad range of scales and hierarchical levels, but accelerating climate change and its collateral impacts are currently the strongest drivers. Deleterious trends in local-scale, ecological processes that occur within reef communities, such as declining herbivory and increasing eutrophication, generally play a subsidiary role at present, because their effects are overwhelmed by the impacts of climate change on many reefs. That does not mean local-scale ecology is irrelevant. Solving environmental problems at one scale or level will by default leave problems at the other scale as the new primary problems. If humanity is able to control climate change at the global level, then community-level processes will in general become limiting. Both local and global impacts must be mitigated and reversed if we are to save coral reefs. |
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