Mass bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef

Assembled from 70 blocks · 2 evidence · 33 related

1. Story
2. Aerial and underwater surveys of over eleven hundred reefs across the Great Barrier Reef in March and April 2016 found that only a small minority — around nine per cent of reefs surveyed — escaped bleaching altogether, with the most severe bleaching concentrated in the northern third of the system, the section that had been least affected by earlier disturbance and was widely assumed to be the most remote and therefore the safest. Follow-up surveys later that year recorded the loss of a large share of shallow-water corals in the worst-affected northern sector. The event is the pivot of this Journey because it broke the assumption that distance from human pressure confers protection: the northern reefs bleached most precisely because they were furthest from anything that could have been managed.
3. Knowledge
4. Reef-building corals (Scleractinia)
5. Coral bleaching
6. Great Barrier Reef
7. Australian Institute of Marine Science
8. Mass bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef
9. A second consecutive year of mass bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef
10. Connections
11. The first global mass bleaching event
12. Great Barrier Reef
13. A second consecutive year of mass bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef
14. Coral bleaching
15. Reef-building corals (Scleractinia)
16. Australian Institute of Marine Science
17. Global warming and recurrent mass bleaching of corals
18. Coral Triangle
19. Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System
20. Crown-of-thorns starfish (Acanthaster)
21. Australian Institute of Marine Science
22. Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority
23. Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Act creates a single managing authority
24. The Great Barrier Reef is inscribed on the World Heritage List
25. Mass synchronous spawning described on the Great Barrier Reef
26. The Long-Term Monitoring Program begins annual reef surveys
27. A measured decline in Great Barrier Reef coral calcification is published
28. Twenty-seven years of monitoring show coral cover roughly halved
29. Mass bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef
30. A second consecutive year of mass bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef
31. Mass bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef during a La Nina
32. The fifth mass bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef since 2016
33. The current state of the fourth global bleaching event is not established in this package
34. Mass bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef
35. Great Barrier Reef
36. Coral bleaching
37. Reef-building corals (Scleractinia)
38. Marine heatwave
39. Degree Heating Weeks (DHW)
40. Symbiont shuffling and thermal tolerance
41. The first global mass bleaching event
42. A published projection that reefs would bleach faster than they could recover
43. The second global bleaching event
44. The third global bleaching event
45. Mass bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef
46. A second consecutive year of mass bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef
47. The interval between severe bleaching events is measured, and it has collapsed
48. Mass bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef during a La Nina
49. The fourth global bleaching event is confirmed
50. The fifth mass bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef since 2016
51. The current state of the fourth global bleaching event is not established in this package
52. Marine heatwave
53. Zooxanthellae (Symbiodiniaceae)
54. Zooxanthellae (Symbiodiniaceae)
55. Coral bleaching
56. Crown-of-thorns starfish (Acanthaster)
57. Elkhorn coral (Acropora palmata)
58. Darwin publishes The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs
59. The first global mass bleaching event
60. A published projection that reefs would bleach faster than they could recover
61. Mass bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef
62. The interval between severe bleaching events is measured, and it has collapsed
63. Great Barrier Reef
64. The Long-Term Monitoring Program begins annual reef surveys
65. Twenty-seven years of monitoring show coral cover roughly halved
66. Mass bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef
67. The fifth mass bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef since 2016
68. Evidence
69. In the 2016 Great Barrier Reef bleaching event only a small minority of the more than eleven hundred reefs surveyed escaped bleaching, with the most severe bleaching in the northern third of the system, and water quality and past exposure did not protect reefs from it. V55 verification basis: not consulted; the survey design and headline result are stated from the producing model's knowledge, and the precise escaped-reef percentage is given as "around nine per cent" rather than to a decimal place.
70. A large share of shallow-water corals in the worst-affected northern Great Barrier Reef died in the months following the March 2016 bleaching, shifting the composition of the surviving assemblage away from the fast-growing branching and tabular species. V55 verification basis: not consulted; the direction and approximate scale of the loss are stated from the producing model's knowledge, and no mortality percentage is quoted here because it could not be checked.