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Global Climate Change Digest
A Guide to Information on Greenhouse Gases and Ozone Depletion
Published July 1988 through June 1999

FROM VOLUME 10, NUMBER 4, APRIL 1997

PROFESSIONAL PUBLICATIONS...
CORAL REEFS AND GLOBAL CHANGE

Special issue: Global Change Biol., 2(6), Dec. 1996. Consists of seven invited, peer reviewed papers, edited by Paul Falkowski (Brookhaven Natl. Lab, Upton NY 11973), one of this journal's editors.

Item #d97apr13

"Reefs Happen," R.A. Kinzie III (Inst. Marine Biol., POB 1946, Kane'ohe HI 96744; e-mail: rkinzie@zoogate. zoo.hawaii.edu), R.W. Buddemeier, 479-494.

A brief, selective introduction intended to convey the biological complexity and biogeochemical significance of corals and reefs, and to give a sense of our level of ignorance and of the importance of unresolved fundamental questions.

Item #d97apr14

"Coral Reef Bleaching: Facts, Hypotheses and Implications," P.W. Glynn (Rosenstiel Sch. Marine & Atmos. Sci., Univ. Miami, 4600 Rickenbacker Causeway, Miami FL 33149; e-mail: pglynn@rsmas.miami.edu), 495-509.

Present evidence suggests that the leading factors responsible for large-scale bleaching are elevated sea temperatures and high solar irradiance (especially UV), which may frequently act jointly.

Item #d97apr15

"Marine Pollution and Coral Reefs," Z. Dubinsky (Dept. Life Sci., Bar Ilan Univ., Ramat Gan 52900, Israel; e-mail: F61119@BARILAN), 511-526.

Item #d97apr16

"Effects of Ultraviolet Radiation [UVR] on Corals and Other Coral Reef Organisms," J.M. Shick (Dept. Zoology, 5751 Murray Hall, Univ. Maine, Orono ME 04469; e-mail: shick@maine.maine.edu), M.P. Lesser, P.L. Jokiel, 527-545.

Interest in this topic heightened because of the loss of stratospheric ozone. This review of the effects of UVR on corals and other reef macroorganisms concludes that even small anthropogenic increases in UVB levels will have sublethal physiological manifestations. But they will have relatively small impact on the distribution of corals and reefs, perhaps affecting their minimum depths of occurrence.

Item #d97apr17

"Global Change and Coral Reefs: Impact on Reefs, Economies and Human Cultures," C.R. Wilkinson (Australian Inst. Marine Sci., PMB 3, Townsville MC, Queensland 4810, Australia), 547-558.

Coral reefs will cope well with predicted sea level rises of 4.5 cm per decade, but reef islands will not. The greatest impact of climate change will be a synergistic enhancement of direct anthropogenic stresses, which currently cause most damage to coral reefs. Reefs have considerable recovery powers and losses can be minimized by effective management of direct human impacts and reducing indirect threats of global climate change.

Item #d97apr18

"Reef Coral Diversity and Global Change," N.E. Chadwick-Furman (Interuniversity Inst. for Marine Sci., POB 469, Eilat, Israel; e-mail: furman@brosh.cc.biu.ac.il), 559-568.

At predicted rates of climate change in the near future, coral reef ecosystems are likely to survive. Increases in sea level may benefit corals and lead to regional increases in diversity. The largest threats to coral diversity are regional anthropogenic impacts, which may interact with global climate change to exacerbate rates of local species extinctions.

Item #d97apr19

"Coral Skeletons: Storage and Recovery of Environmental Information," D.J. Barnes (Australian Inst. Marine Sci., PMB 3, Townsville MC, Queensland 4810, Australia), J.M. Lough, 569-582.

The tropics have few proxy climate records, but the annual density bands in skeletons of long-lived, massive corals promise high-resolution proxy climate records for tropical oceans. This potential has not been fully realized, because corals seemed to yield inconsistent, sometimes conflicting information. Several records are examined which indicate that corals can, in fact, be used for reconstruction of environmental information.