Reef carbonate budget

Assembled from 16 blocks · 1 evidence · 8 related

1. Story
2. The accounting identity that decides whether a reef is a structure or a ruin. Gross carbonate production — chiefly coral calcification, with coralline algae cementing the framework — is set against gross removal: physical erosion by waves, chemical dissolution, and bioerosion by organisms that bore, scrape and excavate the substrate. Parrotfish, urchins, boring sponges and bivalves are all on the removal side. A reef with a net positive budget accretes and can keep pace with rising sea level; a reef with a net negative budget loses relief and complexity even while living coral is still present on it. This is the frame in which a reader should understand bleaching: a mass mortality event does not just remove coral, it flips the sign of the budget, because the removal side keeps running at full rate while the production side stops.
3. Knowledge
4. Coral calcification
5. Reef carbonate budget
6. Connections
7. Coral calcification
8. Ocean acidification
9. Parrotfish (Scarinae)
10. Zooxanthellae (Symbiodiniaceae)
11. Ocean acidification
12. Reef carbonate budget
13. Symbiont shuffling and thermal tolerance
14. A measured decline in Great Barrier Reef coral calcification is published
15. Evidence
16. Global shallow coral reef area is on the order of a few hundred thousand square kilometres — under a tenth of one per cent of the ocean surface — while supporting a very large share of marine species. V55 verification basis: not consulted; the atlas's often-quoted global area figure (about 284,300 square kilometres) is stated from the producing model's knowledge. Later satellite mapping has produced substantially different totals on different definitions, and that discrepancy could not be reconciled here.