Jan 29, 2018
Ocean acidification affects coral growth by reducing skeletal density
by
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- States that ocean acidification (OA) threatens coral reef futures by reducing the concentration of carbonate ions that corals need to construct their skeletons
- States that quantitative predictions of reef futures under OA are confounded by mixed responses of corals to OA in experiments and field observations
- Models the skeletal growth of a dominant reef-building coral, Porites, as a function of seawater chemistry and validated the model against observational data
- Shows that OA directly and negatively affects one component of the two-step growth process (density) but not the other (linear extension)
- Shows that skeletal density of Porites corals could decline by up to 20.3% over the 21st century solely due to OA