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Science 15 August 2003:
Vol. 301. no. 5635, p. 891
DOI: 10.1126/science.301.5635.891d
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This Week in Science
Coral reefs across the globe are widely perceived to be undergoing serious degradation brought about by warmer climate conditions, and three reports document these declines (see also the Review by Hughes et al., p. 929). Much of the data to support this contention are from fragmented small-scale studies of individual reefs or are of an anecdotal nature. Gardner et al. (p. 958) performed a meta-analysis of the decline of coral reefs on a broad geographic scale. They analyzed within-site changes in coral cover across the Caribbean based on data from 263 sites for a period of 25 years and found a dramatic decline in coral cover (from ~50 to 10%) during this period. These declines are consistent across the Caribbean region, with variation in the timing of onset of the declines providing clues as to the likely causes. Pandolfi et al. (p. 955) used an exhaustive historical data set to document the global decline of coral reefs during the past several thousand years. Trajectories of ecosystem decline were strikingly similar among regions that were all substantially degraded before the 20th century. Such historical analyses can allow management programs to anticipate probable losses of species and habitats at individual locations through an understanding of the characteristic pattern of ecosystem decline. A particularly striking example of the widespread, rapid death of coral reefs, and how it may be connected to global warming, is presented by Abram et al. (p. 952), who found that the escalating phenomenon of tropical wildfire represents a new threat. By using coral growth, paleothermometry, and trace element signals, they attribute an episode of catastrophic reef death in Indonesia in 1997 to a giant algal bloom (red tide), which they argue was caused by atmospheric fallout of nutrients from the 1997 Indonesian wildfires. Although they note that the wildfire event was highly unusual, the climatic conditions at the time were not exceptional.
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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)
