Annual growth band analysis of Porites corals: case study Seribu Islands corals, Indonesia

Abstract

Coral growth depends on certain environmental conditions, e.g. temperature, salinity, sedimentation, light, etc. In this paper, the coral core tops from Seribu Islands corals are analyzed for annual growth band parameters. The analyses include calcification rate, density and linear extension. The analysis is used to understand the impact of environmental parameters changes of coral reef waters to the corals growth band. We compare the results of three cores from different locations: Bidadari, Air and Jukung, which represent the inshore to offshore locations. This comparison is expected to picture the impact of anthropogenic (the development of Jakarta) to the coral reefs waters in the Seribu Islands. Coral XDS is used to analyze growth parameters. The result shows that the Jukung coral indicates increasing calcification, while the inshore Bidadari and offshore Air corals indicate decreasing calcification rates for period of 1985-2005. Whether that Bidadari and Air corals more disturbed by the anthropogenic than Jukung coral or not is still require further studies, through a long term monitoring to get the historical data timeseries for improving growth band analysis parameters calibration.