Limitations to coral recovery along an environmental stress gradient

Doropoulos, Christopher; Gómez-Lemos, Luis A.; Salee, Kinam; McLaughlin, M. J.; Tebben, Jan; Koningsveld, M. van; Feng, Ming; Babcock, Russell C.

doi:10.1002/eap.2558

Cited by 13 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 74 publications

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“…High levels of algal coverage and rubble were observed, indicating potential environmental stressors. This is supported by local reports of Barbados pollution and disease 29 and the idea that local ecological drivers mainly impacted coral survival due to low physical implications 30 . This underscores the critical importance of ground-truthing and considering the nearest-neighbor relation, which entails analyzing the spatial relationships between reef sites to understand substrate variations and ecological dynamics better.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 66%

Tracking Over 30 Years of Coral Reef Infrastructure Degradation in Barbados

Griffith,

Castillo,

Lee

et al. 2024

Preprint

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Coral reefs face escalating threats from global and local stressors, with climate change exacerbating these challenges in the Caribbean. This study focuses on coral reef infrastructure in Barbados, where Lewis (2002) documented reef degradation in the 1990s. As 30 years have passed, we chose to determine the rate of change of reef infrastructure and quantify associated substrate presence along the western reefs of Barbados. Using satellite and geotagged imagery, we analyzed 19 reef structures from 2013 to 2023 along the western coast of Barbados, comparing them to Lewis's findings in 1950 and 1991. We also ground-truthed five sites previously categorized as highly degraded reefs to confirm reef structural integrity and substrate-type presence. We confirmed ongoing structural loss, averaging ~146.9 m2 annually across all sites. We identified four primary substrate types: coral, algae-covered substrate, rubble, and sand, with algae-covered substrate predominating and projected to persist. Our results underscore the urgency of monitoring and highlight the potential limitations of satellite assessment. This research enhances understanding of reef dynamics and offers a framework for identifying vulnerable areas, which are crucial for effective conservation efforts.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 66%

Tracking Over 30 Years of Coral Reef Infrastructure Degradation in Barbados

Griffith,

Castillo,

Lee

et al. 2024

Preprint

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“…reef slope, flat or lagoon, [8][9][10]), but also varying locally at finer resolutions, from meters to kilometres. Local physical and environmental factors, such as depth, light, wave exposure, water circulation, temperature, and substrate type drive variability within-reefs [11][12][13][14].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reproducing within-reef variability in coral dynamics with a metacommunity modelling framework

Cresswell,

Haller-Bull,

Gonzalez-Rivero

et al. 2024

Preprint

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Reef systems span spatial scales from 10s to 100s and even 1000s of kilometres, with substantial spatial variability across these scales. Managing and predicting the future of coral reefs requires insights into reef functioning at all spatial scales. However, investigations of reef functioning often consider individual reefs as the smallest unit (10s of kilometres), despite substantial spatiotemporal variability occurring within-reefs (100s of meters). We developed C~scape, a coral metacommunity modelling framework that integrates the demography of corals with population-level responses to physical and environmental spatial layers, to simulate a mosaic of interacting coral communities across a heterogenous seascape. Coral communities are linked using biophysical connectivity modelling. Coral community growth is modelled with a logistic growth model, with the intrinsic growth parameter determined from taxa-specific Integral Projection Models to incorporate demographic mechanisms. Site-specific coral habitat parameters, derived from satellite-based geomorphic and benthic habitat maps, define the maximum coral cover and are used to modulate community growth spatially and temporally as a function of the available space suitable for corals. These parameters are a proxy for the many interacting physical and environmental factors - e.g., depth, light, wave exposure, temperature, and substrate type - that drive within-reef variability in coral demography. Using a case study from the Great Barrier Reef, we show that modulating community growth using site-specific habitat parameters enables more accurate hindcasts of coral cover dynamics, while overlooking within-reef variability may lead to misleading conclusions about metacommunity dynamics. More generally, C~scape provides a valuable framework for predicting spatiotemporal dynamics of coral communities within and between reefs, offering a mechanistic approach to test a range of management and restoration options.

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“…The drivers of mortality are diverse and can include accidental grazing, predation, competition with and overgrowth by other benthic organisms, light limitation, and sedimentation (reviewed in Randall et al 2020). Yet, it is difficult to disentangle the relative contribution of each factor to coral survival, due to complex direct and indirect interactive effects that vary by species, growth morphology, life-history stage, and differ across spatial and temporal scales (Doropoulos et al 2016(Doropoulos et al , 2022Gouezo et al 2020). Predicting which device designs to pair with which species and environments requires a better understanding and resolution of the causes of mortality.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Site mediates performance in a coral‐seeding trial

Randall

Giuliano

Allen

et al. 2022

Restoration Ecology

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Coral seeding is a promising intervention being tested and applied in global reef-restoration efforts. However, high mortality of newly settled corals, particularly in degraded environments, is one of several hurdles to overcome to up-scale this technique. Incorporating design features that mitigate drivers of mortality could increase coral-seeding effectiveness. Here we tested five ceramic seeding-device designs that incorporated various features intended to act as coral microrefugia. Devices seeded with Acropora tenuis spat were deployed to three sites on a shallow mid-shelf reef on the central Great Barrier Reef (GBR), and survival was assessed after 219 days. Average yield (device-level survival) was moderate across the device designs (22%) and all devices performed comparably. However, there was a nearly threefold increase in survival at one site compared with the other, similar sites less than 100 m away. Assessment of the benthic community around each device suggested that the sites hosted similar communities, although multivariate analyses identified a weak but significant positive relationship between survival and the first principal component (only 17% of variance), characterized by higher cover of sponges and epilithic algal communities. These results suggest that within-reef scale variations (10s of meters) in environmental conditions, or variations in community constituents not investigated here (e.g. grazing fishes, mobile invertebrates), may impact the success of coral seeding. Further investigations into the drivers of coral survival at fine spatial scales, particularly abiotic conditions, are required to guide the placement of coral-seeding devices and to predict their effectiveness.

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Limitations to coral recovery along an environmental stress gradient

Cited by 13 publications

References 74 publications

Tracking Over 30 Years of Coral Reef Infrastructure Degradation in Barbados

Tracking Over 30 Years of Coral Reef Infrastructure Degradation in Barbados

Reproducing within-reef variability in coral dynamics with a metacommunity modelling framework

Site mediates performance in a coral‐seeding trial

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