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Long-Term Region-Wide Declines in Caribbean Corals
Toby A. Gardner,1,3Isabelle M. Côté,1*Jennifer A. Gill,1,2,3Alastair Grant,2Andrew R. Watkinson1,2,3
We report a massive region-wide decline of corals across theentire Caribbean basin, with the average hard coral cover onreefs being reduced by 80%, from about 50% to 10% cover, inthree decades. Our meta-analysis shows that patterns of changein coral cover are variable across time periods but largelyconsistent across subregions, suggesting that local causes haveoperated with some degree of synchrony on a region-wide scale.Although the rate of coral loss has slowed in the past decadecompared to the 1980s, significant declines are persisting.The ability of Caribbean coral reefs to cope with future localand global environmental change may be irretrievably compromised.
1 School of Biological Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK. 2 School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK. 3 Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: i.cote{at}uea.ac.uk
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