Reef Weather

During their evolutionary life coral reefs have been exposed to the influence of diverse environmental processes, such as wave energy, extreme temperatures, upwelling, storms, river and runoff inputs, and these factors have been recognized as determinants of the structure and function of coral reef ecosystems. The environmental setting (the average conditions but also anomalous events) is able to modify coral reef ecosystem processes, such as recruitment, growth and mortality. These changes in system function can drive the long term dynamics of reef ecosystems to different states and even shape their distribution.

The dynamics of coral reef ecosystems is related to the collective effect of different disturbances; however, the distribution of stressors is not homogeneous across a region. An intense effort to map the spatial arrangement of human activities and relate these to coral reef health has been conducted (e.g. Bryant et al. 1998), but to date there is no analogous attempt to describe the spatial distribution of environmental patterns, also important drivers of coral reef ecosystem dynamics, and this is one of the focus of MSEL.

We have worked in assessing the value of remote sensing tools to monitor the environment in which coral reefs develop (Green et al. 1996, Mumby et al. 2004), characterizing this environment (e.g. Physical environments of Caribbean reefs within the FORCE project, Monitoring coral reefs in Belize using remote sensing project, GIS database for the Bahamas Biocomplexity project) and relating environmental regimes to coral reef biological responses (e.g. Andréfouët et al. 2002, Chollett et al. 2010, Edwards et al. 2010, Harborne et al. 2006, Mumby et al. 2001, 2007, 2010) showing that reef weather matters.

The Bahamas ABCD

Satellite-derived sea surface temperature metrics for The Bahamas: Chronic thermal stress, maximum of monthly means in non-bleaching years between 1985 and 2005, in °C (top left); Acute thermal stress during bleaching, degree heating weeks in 1998 (bottom left); Categorization of coral reefs by thermal stress regime (right, Mumby et al. 2010)

References

Andréfouët S, Mumby PJ, McField M, Hu C, Müller-Karger F (2002) Revisiting coral reef connectivity. Coral Reefs 21:43-48

Bryant D, Burke L, McManus J, Spalding M (1998) Reefs at risk: a map-based indicator of threats to the world’s coral reefs. World Resources Institute, Washington 56

Chollett I, Mumby P, Cortés J (2010) Upwelling areas do not guarantee refuge for coral reefs in a warming ocean. Marine Ecology Progress Series 416:47-56

Edwards HJ, Elliott IA, Eakin CM, Irikawa A, Madin JS, McField M, Morgan JA, Van Woesik R, Mumby PJ (2010) How much time can herbivore protection buy for coral reefs under realistic regimes of hurricanes and coral bleaching? Global Change Biology In press

Green EP, Mumby PJ, Edwards AJ, Clark CD (1996) A review of remote sensing for the assessment and management of tropical coastal resources. Coastal Management 24:1-40

Harborne AR, Mumby PJ, Zychaluk K, Hedley JD, Blackwell PG (2006) Modeling the beta diversity of coral reefs. Ecology 87:2871-2881

Mumby PJ, Chisholm JRM, Edwards AJ, Andréföuet S, Jaubert J (2001) Cloudy weather may have saved Society Island reef corals during the 1998 ENSO event. Marine Ecology Progress Series 222:209-216

Mumby PJ, Elliott IA, Eakin CM, Skirving W, Paris CB, Edwards HJ, Enríquez S, Iglesias-Prieto R, Cherubin LM, Stevens JR (2010) Reserve design for uncertain responses of coral reefs to climate change. Ecology letters In press

Mumby PJ, Hastings A, Edwards HJ (2007) Thresholds and the resilience of Caribbean coral reefs. Nature 450:98-101

Mumby PJ, Skirving W, Strong AE, Hardy JT, LeDrew EF, Hochberg EJ, Stumpf RP, David LT (2004) Remote sensing of coral reefs and their physical environment. Marine Pollution Bulletin 48:219-228