ENSO Drove 2500-Year Collapse of Eastern Pacific Coral Reefs

• 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

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.