Bermuda
一项为期两年的百慕大珊瑚生长率研究,显示了珊瑚钙化率与夏季海洋温度较高之间的正相关。一个新纸基于科学家领导的研究Scripps Institution of Oceanographyat the University of California San Diego that was published this week in科学进步。
钙化测得的珊瑚生长取决于许多因素,包括温度,光,食物,水流速度和竞争。在野外,当您包括碳酸盐化学,碱度,二氧化碳的部分压力,光,叶绿素A和无机养分时,这些因素会更加复杂。
Scripps chemical oceanographer Andreas Andersson, his graduate student Travis Courtney, and an international team of collaborators from the Bermuda Institute for Ocean Sciences and Christian-Albrecht University in Germany, among others, were involved in the study funded by the National Science Foundation.
The researchers collected temperature, light, and pH readings from two coral reefs in Bermuda over a period of two years. At the same time, they measured the calcification and growth rates of coral samples placed on each of the reefs, as well as seawater chemistry. The team also calculated reef-scale calcification for one of the two reefs studied. All of this information was then analyzed to simplify the relationships between different factors to show which environmental variable affected calcification the most.
“The biggest result was that temperature is the only environmental driver that has significant results for calcification by both coral species at both reef sites and for reef-scale calcification,” Courtney said. “It was the only significant environmental parameter for all calcification measurements that we looked at in this study.”
他们发现在百慕大,两个珊瑚的珊瑚钙化Diploria labyrinthiformis和Porites astreoideswas relatively insensitive to changes in the seawater pH, but very sensitive to changes in temperature. And the observed relationship between temperature and calcification was a positive one—as the seawater got warmer, coral growth sped up.
While we’re not suggesting you go crank up the heater in your aquarium, this study suggests that wild corals can continue to grow as summer temperature rise. That is until they reach a narrow tipping point when they quickly become stressed, expelling algae and growth rates sharply decline.
研究小组发现,峰值和mer seawater temperatures of 30°c or 86° F, were not limiting calcification via thermal stress and, instead, that calcification rates are more strongly limited by cooler winter seawater temperatures.[Scripps]