Seawater carbonate chemistry, calcification and dissolution of a coral reef in the northern Red Sea, 2007, supplement to: Silverman, Jacob; Lazar, Boaz; Erez, Jonathan (2007): Effect of aragonite saturation, temperature, and nutrients on the community calcification rate of a coral reef. Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 112, C05004

• Main Authors: Silverman, Jacob, Lazar, Boaz, Erez, Jonathan
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: PANGAEA - Data Publisher for Earth & Environmental Science 2007
• Subjects: Benthos; Calcification/Dissolution; Coast and continental shelf; Entire community; Field observation; Macro-nutrients; Red Sea; Rocky-shore community; Temperate; Temperature; Date; LATITUDE; LONGITUDE; Salinity; Temperature, water; DEPTH, water; Evaporation, daily total; Residence time; pH; Alkalinity, total; Carbon, inorganic, dissolved; Aragonite saturation state; Calcification rate of calcium carbonate; Dissolution rate; Dissolution rate, standard deviation; Carbonate system computation flag; Carbon dioxide; Partial pressure of carbon dioxide water at sea surface temperature wet air; Fugacity of carbon dioxide water at sea surface temperature wet air; Bicarbonate ion; Carbonate ion; Calcite saturation state; Calculated, see references; pH meter Radiometer PHM 93; Titration potentiometric Metler-Toledo; Calculated using CO2SYS; Alkalinity anomaly technique Smith and Key, 1975; Calculated using seacarb after Nisumaa et al. 2010; European network of excellence for Ocean Ecosystems Analysis EUR-OCEANS; European Project on Ocean Acidification EPOCA; Ocean Acidification International Coordination Centre OA-ICC; Toledo; Ocean acidification
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.1594/pangaea.767586; https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.767586

In this study we investigated the relations between community calcification of an entire coral reef in the northern Red Sea and annual changes in temperature, aragonite saturation and nutrient loading over a two year period. Summer (April-October) and winter (November-March) average calcification rates varied between 60 ± 20 and 30 ± 20 mmol·m-2·d-1, respectively. In general, calcification increased with temperature and aragonite saturation state of reef water with an apparent effect of nutrients, which is in agreement with most laboratory studies and in situ measurements of single coral growth rates. The calcification rates we measured in the reef correlated remarkably well with precipitation rates of inorganic aragonite calculated for the same temperature and degree of saturation ranges using empirical equations from the literature. This is a very significant finding considering that only a minute portion of reef calcification is inorganic. Hence, these relations could be used to predict the response of coral reefs to ocean acidification and warming. : In order to allow full comparability with other ocean acidification data sets, the R package seacarb (Lavigne and Gattuso, 2011) was used to compute a complete and consistent set of carbonate system variables, as described by Nisumaa et al. (2010). In this dataset the original values were archived in addition with the recalculated parameters (see related PI).