Not logged in
PANGAEA.
Data Publisher for Earth & Environmental Science

Wall, Marlene; Putchim, Lalita; Schmidt, Gertraud; Jantzen, Carin; Khokiattiwong, Somkiat; Richter, Claudio (2014): Coral communities exposed to differential large amplitude internal waves cooling and a severe heat stress in 2010 in the Andaman Sea [dataset publication series]. PANGAEA, https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.831046, Supplement to: Wall, M et al. (2015): Large-amplitude internal waves benefit corals during thermal stress. Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences, 282(1799), 20140650, https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2014.0650

Always quote citation above when using data! You can download the citation in several formats below.

RIS CitationBibTeX CitationShow MapGoogle Earth

Abstract:
Tropical scleractinian corals are particularly vulnerable to global warming as elevated sea surface temperatures (SST) disrupt the delicate balance between the coral host and their algal endosymbionts, leading to symbiont expulsion, mass bleaching and mortality. While satellite sensing of SST has proven a good predictor of coral bleaching at the regional scale, there are large deviations in bleaching severity and mortality on the local scale, which are only poorly understood. Here, we show that internal waves play a major role in explaining local coral bleaching and mortality patterns in the Andaman Sea. In spite of a severe region-wide SST anomaly in May 2010, frequent upslope intrusions of cold sub-pycnocline waters due to breaking large amplitude internal waves (LAIW) alleviated heating and mitigated coral bleaching and mortality in shallow LAIW-exposed waters. In LAIW-sheltered waters, by contrast, bleaching susceptible species suffered severe bleaching and total mortality. These findings suggest that LAIW, which are ubiquitous in tropical stratified waters, benefit coral reefs during thermal stress and provide local refugia for bleaching susceptible corals. The swash zones of LAIW may thus be important, so far overlooked, conservation areas for the maintainance of coral diversity in a warming climate. The consideration of LAIW can significantly improve coral bleaching predictions and can provide a valuable tool for coral reef conservation and management.
Coverage:
Median Latitude: 8.486239 * Median Longitude: 98.046682 * South-bound Latitude: 7.580000 * West-bound Longitude: 97.470000 * North-bound Latitude: 9.560000 * East-bound Longitude: 98.373100
Date/Time Start: 2010-03-01T00:04:00 * Date/Time End: 2010-12-18T16:00:00
Comment:
CalMarO - Calcification by marine organisms, PEOPLE-2007-1-1-ITN Marie Curie Action: 215157
BioAcid - German Ministry for Education and Research Project (Bmbf), Grant number 03F0608B, Bioacid 3.2.3, Coral Calcification in marginal reefs
ORCAS - Ocean Reef Coupling in the Andaman Sea - German Research Foundation (DFG), Grant number RI 1074/7-1
Size:
4 datasets

Download Data

Download ZIP file containing all datasets as tab-delimited text — use the following character encoding: