SCOR Working Group 104

Coral Reef Responses to Global Change: The Role of Adaptation

See also, SCOR Ocean Carbon Working Groups.

Chair(s)
Robert W. Buddemeier (USA)
Other Full Members
Rolf Bak (Netherlands), Terry Done (Australia), Ruth Gates (USA), Jean-Pierre Gattuso (France), Bruce Hatcher (St. Vincent), John Pandolfi (USA), A. Barrie Pittock (Australia), and Kiyoshi Yamazato (Japan)
Associate Members
Clovis B. Castro (Brazil), Bradley Opdyke (Australia), Jurgen Pätzold (Germany), Robert Rowan (USA), S.V. Smith (USA), and David Yellowlees (Australia)
Terms of Reference

  1. To review, classify, and summarize present evidence for adaptation to climate/environmental change at the organism and community levels, with attention to the issues of rates and limitations.

  2. To present available evidence and theories and to solicit scientific input from the broader community by organizing one or more special sessions at the 8th International Coral Reef Symposium (Panama, June 1996), based on initial review and issue formulation by working group members. The Symposium program organizers have agreed in principle to support this activity which is seen as providing an important avenue of communication with the larger community of coral reef scientists.

  3. To work with the broader input obtained from these symposia to produce by mid-1998 an authoritative report or compilation of reports to SCOR addressing the following issues:

    • The evidence for adaptive responses to environmental change at both the organism and the coral reef community level. Issues of community structure as well as function (metabolism and carbon budgets) will be specifically addressed, as well as time scales relevant to climatic cycles as well as the biological processes of existing reefs.
    • Hypotheses concerning the mechanisms for these adaptive responses and for their interactions or propagation across time and space scales relevant to global change. This will explicitly include identification of critical research needs and opportunities.
    • Rate dependence and critical thresholds for reef survival, adaptation, or re-establishment, with specific reference to the relationship between past and present environmental change and the scenarios for greenhouse-enhanced future change.
Approved
November 1994
Financial Sponsors
SCOR, IOC
Meetings

  1. June 1996 – Panama

  2. 6-7 January 1998 – Boston, Massachusetts, USA – SICB/SCOR CORAL REEF SYMPOSIUM

Publications

  • 1995 Report to SCOR

  • 1996 Report to SCOR

  • 1997 Report to SCOR

  • 1998 Report to SCOR

  • Buddemeier, R.W. 1998. Corals, carbon dioxide and cooperation. LOICZ Newsletter March 1998, pp 2-3.

  • Buddemeier, R.W. 1998. Coral reefs and global change: Adaptation, Acclimation, or Extinction? Environmental Conservation 25(2):172.

  • Buddemeier, R.W. 1998. Coral reefs and global change: Adaptation, Acclimation, or Extinction? Reef Encounter, Newsletter of the International Society for Reef Studies Number 23, July 1998, pp. 5-6.

  • Buddemeier, R.W., and H.R. Lasker (eds.). 1999. Coral reefs and Environmental Change–Adaptation, Acclimation, or Extinction. American Zoologist 39(1):1-183.

  • Kleypas, J.A., R.W. Buddemeier, D. Archer, J.-P. Gattuso, C. Langdon, and B.N. Opdyke. 1999. Geochemical consequences of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide on coral reefs. Science284:118-210

  • Kleypas, J.A., and B. Opdyke. 1998. Symposium participants assess future of coral reefs. Eos, Transactions of the American Geophysical Union 79(21):249,251, 253.

  • Pennisi, E. 1998. New threat seen from carbon dioxide. Science 279:989.