ENSO Drove 2500-Year Collapse of Eastern Pacific Coral Reefs

A Long Collapse Coral reefs are threatened by global warming and ocean acidification, and so it is important to understand better how and why environmental changes have affected them in the past. Toth et al. (p. 81 ) present a 6000-year-long record of coral reefs off the coast of Panama, Central Ame...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Published in:Science
Main Authors: Toth, Lauren T., Aronson, Richard B., Vollmer, Steven V., Hobbs, Jennifer W., Urrego, Dunia H., Cheng, Hai, Enochs, Ian C., Combosch, David J., van Woesik, Robert, Macintyre, Ian G.
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 2012
Subjects:
Pacific
Toth
Ocean acidification
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1221168
https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/science.1221168
Description
Summary:A Long Collapse Coral reefs are threatened by global warming and ocean acidification, and so it is important to understand better how and why environmental changes have affected them in the past. Toth et al. (p. 81 ) present a 6000-year-long record of coral reefs off the coast of Panama, Central America. The reefs effectively stopped growing for approximately 2600 years, beginning around 4000 years ago. This collapse of the coral reef system was probably caused by increased variability of ENSO, the El Nino–Southern Oscillation. If the strength or frequency of ENSO were to increase, the viability of these and other reef systems in the Pacific could be put further at risk.

Similar Items