The Great Barrier Reef (GBR) off the eastern coast of Queensland, Australia is the world's largest reef. In fact, it's the largest living thing on Earth spanning more than 2500km (GBRMPA). As climate changes in response to human activities, the GBR suffers the indirect effects of increased atmospheric CO2 emissions.
The most pronounced and widespread effect of climate change on the GBR is coral bleaching. Coral bleaching is the visible change in coral appearance as a result of the death (or loss) of symbiotic organisms that give the coral its color. As sea temperatures rise in response to climate change, the marine algae that live within the coral (and on its surface) die off - when they disappear, they leave behind the white coral structure. In small patches, coral bleaching isn't a problem - it can even be a good thing for growing new algae. However, the widespread bleaching resulting from average sea temperature increases that may or may not be permanent in nature highlights real problems for the reef. Currently 97% of the great barrier reef has been bleached or partially bleached. Will it ever restore itself and heal from the impacts of climate change? That's a question scientists are currently working on, and the future doesn't look too bright (link).
Other effects of climate change on the reef include ocean acidification (which impacts calcium carbonate formation of the coral itself) and sea level rise (which changes the location of the reef relative to the coastline).
For more information, check out the links below.
https://www.coralcoe.org.au/media-releases/only-7-of-the-great-barrier-reef-has-avoided-coral-bleaching
Friday, November 14, 2014
What are some impacts of climate change on the Great Barrier Reef? How would these impacts alter biotic/abiotic components of the ecosystem? Are there any further impacts?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Why is the fact that the Americans are helping the Russians important?
In the late author Tom Clancy’s first novel, The Hunt for Red October, the assistance rendered to the Russians by the United States is impor...
-
There are a plethora of rules that Jonas and the other citizens must follow. Again, page numbers will vary given the edition of the book tha...
-
The poem contrasts the nighttime, imaginative world of a child with his daytime, prosaic world. In the first stanza, the child, on going to ...
-
The given two points of the exponential function are (2,24) and (3,144). To determine the exponential function y=ab^x plug-in the given x an...
-
The play Duchess of Malfi is named after the character and real life historical tragic figure of Duchess of Malfi who was the regent of the ...
-
The only example of simile in "The Lottery"—and a particularly weak one at that—is when Mrs. Hutchinson taps Mrs. Delacroix on the...
-
Hello! This expression is already a sum of two numbers, sin(32) and sin(54). Probably you want or express it as a product, or as an expressi...
-
Macbeth is reflecting on the Weird Sisters' prophecy and its astonishing accuracy. The witches were totally correct in predicting that M...
No comments:
Post a Comment