Coral growth and reef growth: a brief review

Abstract

The growth potential of modern zooxanthellate corals from the major reef provinces is reviewed with respect to Holocene reef growth. Both coral growth and reef growth is enhanced globally at the beginning of the Holocene and is maintained regionally in the Caribbean Sea up to the present in contrast to reefs of the Indo-Pacific Ocean. This regional difference is mainly caused by the siphoning effect of the tropical Atlantic, which is characterised still by a rising sea level in contrast to global ocean. Hence, Indo-Pacific reefs exhibit a well-cemented reef crest and reef roof barren of living corals. The evaluation of reef growth rates throughout the Phanerozoic shows reduced growth rates of more than one order of magnitude in comparison to their modern counterparts. This is a result of compaction and diagenesis but also strongly biased by uncertainties in absolute dating. Point counting of individual framebuilders with known growth rate may result in more comparative figures for growth rates of fossil reefs with respect to modern ones.

Coastal evolution on volcanic oceanic islands: A complex interplay between volcanism, erosion, sedimentation, sea-level change and biogenic production

“…Coral growth is restricted to regions with favorable oceanographic conditions, typically in tropical and subtropical waters away from large freshwater, mud and dust inputs (Stoddart and Steers, 1977;Chappell, 1980;Spalding and Grenfell, 1997;Dullo, 2005). Coral reef growth, however, has a profound influence on coastal evolution: coral reefs protect island edifices from marine abrasion (incuding during storm surges and tsunamis), provide a barrier that allows significant sediment accumulation within island shelves, and frequently are the most important sediment supplier on the edifices in which they grow (Kennedy and Woodroffe, 2000;Kunkel et al, 2006;Gelfenbaum et al, 2011).…”

“…The development of coral reefs around volcanic islands and over the timescales of glacio-eustatic cycles is essentially controlled by the vertical rate of reef accretion, which is the integrated result of coral growth, local production of detritus, and lithification (Dullo, 2005;Montaggioni, 2005;Toomey et al, 2013). Reef accretion rates typically decrease with increasing water depths, mostly because reduced light intensity limits coral growth (Bosscher and Schlager, 1992); as light intensity reduces with depth, it limits photosynthesis by the zooxanthellae algae that live in symbiosis with corals and on which they depend.…”

The influence of seawater pH on U / Ca ratios in the scleractinian cold-water coral <i>Lophelia pertusa</i>

“…The tolerated temperature range of L. pertusa is 4-14 • C, but pristine reefs thrive between 6 • C on the Norwegian margin and 10 • C on the Irish margin (Roberts et al, 2006). In such environments single polyps can grow as fast as ∼ 27 mm year −1 (e.g, Gass and Roberts, 2010), comparable to their tropical counterparts (Dullo, 2005). However, recent studies have shown that these unique ecosystems of the North Atlantic have been sensitive to other environmental changes such as bottom currents and nutrient availability (e.g.…”

Exploring coral reef responses to millennial-scale climatic forcings: insights from the 1-D numerical tool pyReef-Core v1.0

“…in shallow depth) experience increased hydrodynamic energy (Montaggioni, 2005). The effect of light is assumed to dominate over the effect of water movement in limiting carbonate production (Dullo, 2005) (Fig. 1); however, both effects play a role in determining coral composition and, in turn, rates of vertical accretion (Cabioch et al, 1999;Kayanne et al, 2002).…”