Successive bleaching events cause mass coral mortality in Guam, Micronesia

Raymundo, Laurie J.; Burdick, David R.; Hoot, Whitney C.; Miller, Reinhard; Brown, Valerie A.; Reynolds, Taylor L.; Gault, J.; Idechong, Jacques; Fifer, James E.; Williams, Ashley J.

doi:10.1007/s00338-019-01836-2

Cited by 59 publications

(70 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…In 2015 and again in 2016, the pattern of bleaching matched that seen during the first global-scale coral bleaching event in 1998 (Hoegh-Guldberg 1999). Thus, the 2014-2017 GCBE represents the first multi-year global-scale coral bleaching event, causing bleaching and mortality two or more times during the 3-yr event (Harrison et al 2018;Head et al 2019;Hughes et al 2019a;Raymundo et al 2019;Smith et al 2019;Teixeira et al 2019). The heat stress on coral reefs has successively increased over the past 3 decades, but the 3-yr event from June 2014 to May 2017 stands out as unique in the multidecadal record (Skirving et al 2019).…”

Section: What Was Different In 2014-2017?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Even some of the hottest coral reef areas in the world succumbed to heat stress during the 2014-2017 GCBE, showing that heat stress had even exceeded their limits (Burt et al 2019). In the western Pacific US territories of Guam and the Commonwealth of the Mariana Islands, the 2014-2017 period was only part of a series of repeated heat stress events in a place where we are beginning to see how the annual return of bleaching levels of heat stress may impact reefs (Raymundo et al 2019). Successive years of extreme summer temperatures have been predicted to occur a few decades from now (Donner et al 2018)-so why are we already seeing it before 2020?…”

Section: What Was Different In 2014-2017?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In others, reefs may be predominated by a few species that are resilient to bleaching and recover well (Johnston et al 2019) but may have reduced reproductive output or success (Fisch et al 2019;Hughes et al 2019b). Repeated years of heat stress may result in less bleaching during later events (Harrison et al 2018;Fisch et al 2019;Hughes et al 2019a) or may overwhelm reefs to the point that their persistence is in question (Riegl et al 2018;Raymundo et al 2019). In a theme repeated from earlier mass bleaching events, heat stress, bleaching, and disease were interrelated, with greater tissue loss from disease in highly bleached corals (Brodnicke et al 2019).…”

Section: What Have We Learned From Gcbe-3?mentioning

confidence: 99%

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The 2014–2017 global-scale coral bleaching event: insights and impacts

Eakin

Sweatman

Brainard³

2019

Coral Reefs

296

184

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2014-2017 was an unprecedented period of successive record-breaking hot years, which coincided with the most severe, widespread, and longest-lasting globalscale coral bleaching event ever recorded. The 2014-2017 global-scale coral bleaching event (GCBE) resulted in very high coral mortality on many reefs, rapid deterioration of reef structures, and far-reaching environmental impacts. Through the papers in this special issue of Coral Reefs entitled The 2014-2017 Global Coral Bleaching Event: Drivers, Impacts, and Lessons Learned, as well as papers published elsewhere, we have a good analysis of the 2014-2017 GCBE and its impacts. These studies have provided key insights into how climate change-driven marine heatwaves are destroying coral reef ecosystems: (a) The 2014-2017 GCBE is unique in the satellite record in its spatial scale, duration, intensity, and repetition of bleaching. (b) The impacts have been the most severe ever seen at many reefs. (c) Timing of observations matters and needs to be considered during the analysis of impacts. (d) On both global and local scales, the intensity of heat stress and impacts varied. (e) We continue to see important differences among and within coral taxa, with key roles played by algal symbionts and the microbiome. (f) Heat stress and bleaching both play a role in subsequent disease, which plays a key role in mortality. (g) Impacts ripple far beyond corals, with significant changes to the fish and invertebrate community that may last decades. (h) The structure of both individual coral's skeletons and entire reefs has been eroded much more quickly than previously realized. (i) The 2014-2017 GCBE provided little support for the proposed ''lifeboat'' hypothesis, whereby deep or mesophotic reefs serve as a means of coral reef salvation. (j) While marine protected areas (MPAs) provide protection from local stressors, they not only do not protect reefs from global-scale stressors, but also here is also little evidence they provide significant resilience. Keywords Coral bleaching Á Heat stress Á Coral Reef Watch Á CoralTemp Á Marine heatwave Á Symbionts Á Microbiome Á Coral disease Á El Niño Á ENSO

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Section: What Was Different In 2014-2017?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: What Was Different In 2014-2017?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: What Have We Learned From Gcbe-3?mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The 2014–2017 global-scale coral bleaching event: insights and impacts

Eakin

Sweatman

Brainard³

2019

Coral Reefs

296

184

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…In addition, between 2014 and 2017, "back-to-back" thermal anomalies occurred on the northeastern coast of Australia, causing massive coral bleaching in the north and mid sections of the Great Barrier Reef; this is arguably the worst-ever bleaching in the history of the GBR [7,8] and other parts of Australia [9,10]. Similar global-scale coral bleaching events (GCBE) that result in high coral mortality, the rapid decline of reef structures, and unprecedented environmental impacts have also been reported in the Indian [11,12], Pacific [13][14][15], and Atlantic Oceans [16,17]. Scientists have therefore concluded that the 2014-2017 GCBE represents the first multi-year, global-scale coral bleaching event to cause bleaching and mortality two or more times over the 3-year event [18].…”

Section: Coral Reef Ecosystems and The Impacts Of Environmental Changementioning

confidence: 89%

Coral Reef Resilience in Taiwan: Lessons from Long-Term Ecological Research on the Coral Reefs of Kenting National Park (Taiwan)

Keshavmurthy

Kuo

Huang

et al. 2019

JMSE

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Coral reefs in the Anthropocene are being subjected to unprecedented levels of stressors, including local disturbances—such as overfishing, habitat destruction, and pollution—and large-scale destruction related to the global impacts of climate change—such as typhoons and coral bleaching. Thus, the future of corals and coral reefs in any given community and coral-Symbiodiniaceae associations over time will depend on their level of resilience, from individual corals to entire ecosystems. Herein we review the environmental settings and long-term ecological research on coral reefs, based on both coral resilience and space, in Kenting National Park (KNP), Hengchun Peninsula, southern Taiwan, wherein fringing reefs have developed along the coast of both capes and a semi-closed bay, known as Nanwan, within the peninsula. These reefs are influenced by a branch of Kuroshio Current, the monsoon-induced South China Sea Surface Current, and a tide-induced upwelling that not only shapes coral communities, but also reduces the seawater temperature and creates fluctuating thermal environments which over time have favoured thermal-resistant corals, particularly those corals close to the thermal effluent of a nuclear power plant in the west Nanwan. Although living coral cover (LCC) has fluctuated through time in concordance with major typhoons and coral bleaching between 1986 and 2019, spatial heterogeneity in LCC recovery has been detected, suggesting that coral reef resilience is variable among subregions in KNP. In addition, corals exposed to progressively warmer and fluctuating thermal environments show not only a dominance of associated, thermally-tolerant Durusdinium spp. but also the ability to shuffle their symbiont communities in response to seasonal variations in seawater temperature without bleaching. We demonstrate that coral reefs in a small geographical range with unique environmental settings and ecological characteristics, such as the KNP reef, may be resilient to bleaching and deserve novel conservation efforts. Thus, this review calls for conservation efforts that use resilience-based management programs to reduce local stresses and meet the challenge of climate change.

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“…These global bleaching events are becoming more frequent (1998, 2010 and 2014-17) and severe [14,16,[18][19][20][21][22], leaving coral reefs vulnerable and unable to recover. The 2014-2017 mass bleaching event, which lasted 36 months and spanned four calendar years, was the longest-lasting, most widespread, and probably most damaging event on record [21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29], and stands out as unique by spanning all phases of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation cycle of 2017, being the warmest non-El Niño year ever recorded [21,30].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Thermal Stress and Resilience of Corals in a Climate-Changing World

Carballo-Bolaños

Soto

Chen

2019

JMSE

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Coral reef ecosystems are under the direct threat of increasing atmospheric greenhouse gases, which increase seawater temperatures in the oceans and lead to bleaching events. Global bleaching events are becoming more frequent and stronger, and understanding how corals can tolerate and survive high-temperature stress should be accorded paramount priority. Here, we review evidence of the different mechanisms that corals employ to mitigate thermal stress, which include association with thermally tolerant endosymbionts, acclimatisation, and adaptation processes. These differences highlight the physiological diversity and complexity of symbiotic organisms, such as scleractinian corals, where each species (coral host and microbial endosymbionts) responds differently to thermal stress. We conclude by offering some insights into the future of coral reefs and examining the strategies scientists are leveraging to ensure the survival of this valuable ecosystem. Without a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and a divergence from our societal dependence on fossil fuels, natural mechanisms possessed by corals might be insufficient towards ensuring the ecological functioning of coral reef ecosystems.

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Successive bleaching events cause mass coral mortality in Guam, Micronesia

Cited by 59 publications

References 19 publications

The 2014–2017 global-scale coral bleaching event: insights and impacts

The 2014–2017 global-scale coral bleaching event: insights and impacts

Coral Reef Resilience in Taiwan: Lessons from Long-Term Ecological Research on the Coral Reefs of Kenting National Park (Taiwan)

Thermal Stress and Resilience of Corals in a Climate-Changing World

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