Coral bleaching is among the greatest threats to coral reefs today, causing widespread mortality. The factors that determine the ability of a reef to recover following a bleaching event are unknown, and this limits the predictability of reef responses under climate change scenarios.
To investigate the factors affecting reef recovery, Nicholas Graham from James Cook University, Australia, and co-workers document long-term reef responses to a major climate-induced coral bleaching event in the Indo–Pacific. Following loss of 90% of live coral cover, 12 of the 21 reefs investigated recovered towards pre-disturbance states, while the others shifted to fleshy macroalgae (seaweed) dominated systems.
The authors identified thresholds for those factors that accurately predicted ecosystem response to the bleaching event. Recovery was favoured when reefs were structurally complex and in deeper water, when the density of juvenile corals and herbivorous fishes was relatively high and when nutrient loads were low. Pre-disturbance measurment of simple factors such as structural complexity and water depth might therefore accurately predict ecosystem trajectories following bleaching events.
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Brown, A. Rebounding coral reefs. Nature Clim Change 5, 193 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2560
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2560
