Climate change and coral reefs

Abstract

Coral reef ecosystems are highly vulnerable to stresses associated with a changing climate. These stresses are superimposed on local stresses in many regions that have already resulted in significant degradation in the goods and services that healthy coral reefs provide (Buddemeier et al., 2004). Coral reefs are unlikely to disappear, but in the future they are likely to calcify less and there will be fewer reefs that are able to sustain the necessary reef framework that supports many thousands of marine organisms with a consequent loss in marine biodiversity (Guinotte et al., 2003). Our understanding of the full consequences of a rapidly changing climate and ocean chemistry for coral reef ecosystems is still limited and, unfortunately, the experiment is occurring in real time in the real world. The consequences of anthropogenic climate change for coral reefs are inequitable. The countries most responsible for anthropogenic climate change produce 6–11 times more CO2 per person than the more than 400 million people living close to coral reefs (Donner and Potere, 2007). It is, however, these communities that will suffer most from the loss of the goods and services provided by healthy coral reef ecosystems.