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Coral reefs are facing threats from a variety of global change stressors, including ocean warming, acidification, and deoxygenation. It has been hypothesized that growing corals near primary producers such as macroalgae or seagrass may help to ameliorate acidification and deoxygenation stress, however few studies have explored this effect in situ. Here, we investigated differences in coral growth rates across a natural gradient in seawater temperature, pH, and dissolved oxygen (DO) variability in a nearshore seagrass bed on Dongsha Atoll, Taiwan, South China Sea. We observed strong spatial gradients in temperature (5°C), pH (0.29 pH units), and DO (129 μmol O2 kg-1) across the 1-kilometer wide seagrass bed. Similarly, diel variability recorded by an autonomous sensor in the shallow seagrass measured diel ranges in temperature, pH, and DO of up to 2.6°C, 0.55, and 204 μmol O2 kg-1, respectively. Skeletal cores collected from 15 massive Porites corals growing in the seagrass bed at 4 sites revealed no significant differences in coral calcification rates between sites along the gradients. However, significant differences in skeletal extension rate and density suggest that the dynamic temperature, pH, and/or DO variability may have influenced these properties. The lack of differences in coral growth between sites may be because favorable calcification conditions during the day (high temperature, pH, and DO) were proportionally balanced by unfavorable conditions during the night (low temperature, pH, and DO). Alternatively, other factors were simply more important in controlling coral calcification and/or corals were acclimated to the prevailing conditions at each site. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2014–2017 global coral bleaching event caused widespread coral mortality; however, its impact on the capacity for coral reefs to maintain calcium carbonate structures has not been determined. Here, we quantified remotely sensed maximum heat stress during the 2014–2017 bleaching event, census‐based net carbonate budgets from benthic imagery and fish survey data, and net reef calcification from salinity normalized seawater total alkalinity anomalies collected from 2017–2019 for 56 Pacific coral reef sites (Mariana Islands, Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, Pacific Remote Island Areas, and American Samoa). We incorporated the census‐based and chemistry‐based metrics to determine a calcification vulnerability index for each site to maintain calcium carbonate balance to provide accessible information to managers and policy makers. Most coral reef sites likely experienced ecologically severe (79%, n = 44) or significant (9%, n = 7) heat stress during the 2014–2017 coral bleaching event. Census‐based net carbonate budgets (mean ± 95% = 2.1 ± 0.6 kg CaCO3 m−2 yr−1) were positive for 77% of sites (n = 43), neutral for 16% of sites (n = 9), and negative for 7% of sites (n = 4). Chemistry‐based relative net reef calcification (mean ± 95% = 22 ± 10 μmol kg−1) was positive for 84% of sites (n = 47), neutral for 11% of sites (n = 6), and negative for 5% of sites (n = 3). The calcification vulnerability index suggested the Pacific Ocean reef sites surveyed were of minimal (68%, n = 38) to moderate (32%, n = 18) concern for maintaining calcium carbonate balance following the bleaching event. This suggests that many reefs maintained positive calcium carbonate balance, but that a large number of reefs may be approaching a potential threshold for maintaining their calcium carbonate balance under the climate crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Salinity normalization of total alkalinity (TA) and dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) data is commonly used to account for conservative mixing processes when inferring net metabolic modification of seawater by coral reefs. Salinity (S), TA, and DIC can be accurately and precisely measured, but salinity normalization of TA (nTA) and DIC (nDIC) can generate considerable and unrecognized uncertainties in coral reef metabolic rate estimates. While salinity normalization errors apply to nTA, nDIC, and other ions of interest in coral reefs, here, we focus on nTA due to its application as a proxy for net coral reef calcification and the importance for reefs to maintain calcium carbonate production under environmental change. We used global datasets of coral reef TA, S, and modeled groundwater discharge to assess the effect of different volumetric ratios of multiple freshwater TA inputs (i.e., groundwater, river, surface runoff, and precipitation) on nTA. Coral reef freshwater endmember TA ranged from -2 up to 3032 μmol/kg in hypothetical reef locations with freshwater inputs dominated by riverine, surface runoff, or precipitation mixing with groundwater. The upper bound of freshwater TA in these scenarios can result in an uncertainty in reef TA of up to 90 μmol/kg per unit S normalization if the freshwater endmember is erroneously assumed to have 0 μmol/kg alkalinity. The uncertainty associated with S normalization can, under some circumstances, even shift the interpretation of whether reefs are net calcifying to net dissolving, or vice versa. Moreover, the choice of reference salinity for normalization implicitly makes assumptions about whether biogeochemical processes occur before or after mixing between different water masses, which can add uncertainties of ±1.4% nTA per unit S normalization. Additional considerations in identifying potential freshwater sources of TA and their relative volumetric impact on seawater are required to reduce uncertainties associated with S normalization of coral reef carbonate chemistry data in some environments. However, at a minimum, researchers should minimize the range of salinities over which the normalization is applied, precisely measure salinity, and normalize TA values to a carefully selected reference salinity that takes local factors into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coral reefs are facing intensifying stressors, largely due to global increases in seawater temperature and decreases in pH. However, there is extensive environmental variability within coral reef ecosystems, which can impact how organisms respond to global trends. We deployed spatial arrays of autonomous sensors across distinct shallow coral reef habitats to determine patterns of spatiotemporal variability in seawater physicochemical parameters. Temperature and pH were positively correlated over the course of a day due to solar heating and light‐driven metabolism. The mean temporal and spatial ranges of temperature and pH were positively correlated across all sites, with different regimes of variability observed in different reef types. Ultimately, depth was a reliable predictor of the average diel ranges in both seawater temperature and pH. These results demonstrate that there is widespread environmental variability on diel timescales within coral reefs related to water column depth, which needs to be included in assessments of how global change will locally affect reef ecosystems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anthropogenic environmental change has increased coral reef disturbance regimes in recent decades, altering the structure and function of many coral reefs globally. In this study, we used coral community survey data collected from 1996 to 2015 to evaluate reef-scale coral calcification capacity (CCC) dynamics with respect to recorded pulse disturbances for 121 reef sites in the Main Hawaiian Islands and Mo'orea (French Polynesia) in the Pacific and the Florida Keys Reef Tract and St. John (U.S. Virgin Islands) in the western Atlantic. CCC remained relatively high in the Main Hawaiian Islands in the absence of recorded widespread disturbances; declined and subsequently recovered in Mo'orea following a crown-ofthorns sea star outbreak, coral bleaching, and major cyclone; decreased and remained low following coral bleaching in the Florida Keys Reef Tract; and decreased following coral bleaching and disease in St. John. Individual coral taxa have variable calcification rates and susceptibility to disturbances because of their differing life-history strategies. As a result, temporal changes in CCC in this study were driven by shifts in both overall coral cover and coral community composition. Analysis of our results considering coral lifehistory strategies showed that weedy corals generally increased their contributions to CCC over time while the contribution of competitive corals decreased. Shifts in contributions by stress-tolerant and generalist corals to CCC were more variable across regions. The increasing frequency and intensity of disturbances under 21st century global change therefore has the potential to drive lower and more variable CCC because of the increasing dominance of weedy and some stress-tolerant corals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coral reef community composition and ecosystem function may change in response to anthropogenic ocean acidification. However, the magnitude of acidification on reefs will be modified by natural spatial and temporal variability in seawater CO2 chemistry. Consequently, it is necessary to quantify the ecological, biogeochemical, and physical drivers of this natural variability before making robust predictions of future acidification on reefs. In this study, we measured temporal and spatial physiochemical variability on a reef flat in Kāne'ohe Bay, O'ahu, Hawai'i, using autonomous sensors at sites with contrasting benthic communities and by sampling surface seawater CO2 chemistry across the reef flat at different times of the day during June and November. Mean and diurnal temporal variability of seawater CO2 chemistry was more strongly influenced by depth gradients (~ 0.5–10 m) on the reef rather than benthic community composition. Spatial CO2 chemistry gradients across the reef flat reflected the cumulative influence from benthic metabolism, bathymetry, and hydrodynamics. Based on graphical assessment of total alkalinity–dissolved inorganic carbon data, reef metabolism in November was dominated by organic carbon cycling over inorganic carbon cycling, while these processes were closely balanced in June. Overall, this study highlights the strong influence of depth on reef seawater CO2 chemistry variability through its effects on benthic biomass to seawater volume ratio, seawater flow rates, and residence time. Thus, the natural complexity of ecosystems where a combination of ecological and physical factors influence reef chemistry must be considered when predicting ecosystem biogeochemical responses to future anthropogenic changes in seawater CO2 chemistry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ship-based time series, some now approaching over 3 decades long, are critical climate records that have dramatically improved our ability to characterize natural and anthropogenic drivers of ocean carbon dioxide (CO2) uptake and biogeochemical processes. Advancements in autonomous marine carbon sensors and technologies over the last 2 decades have led to the expansion of observations at fixed time series sites, thereby improving the capability of characterizing sub-seasonal variability in the ocean. Here, we present a data product of 40 individual autonomous moored surface ocean pCO2 (partial pressure of CO2) time series established between 2004 and 2013, 17 also include autonomous pH measurements. These time series characterize a wide range of surface ocean carbonate conditions in different oceanic (17 sites), coastal (13 sites), and coral reef (10 sites) regimes. A time of trend emergence (ToE) methodology applied to the time series that exhibit well-constrained daily to interannual variability and an estimate of decadal variability indicates that the length of sustained observations necessary to detect statistically significant anthropogenic trends varies by marine environment. The ToE estimates for seawater pCO2 and pH range from 8 to 15 years at the open ocean sites, 16 to 41 years at the coastal sites, and 9 to 22 years at the coral reef sites. Only two open ocean pCO2 time series, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Hawaii Ocean Time-series Station (WHOTS) in the subtropical North Pacific and Stratus in the South Pacific gyre, have been deployed longer than the estimated trend detection time and, for these, deseasoned monthly means show estimated anthropogenic trends of 1.9±0.3 and 1.6±0.3 µatmyr-1 , respectively. In the future, it is possible that updates to this product will allow for the estimation of anthropogenic trends at more sites; however, the product currently provides a valuable tool in an accessible format for evaluating climatology and natural variability of surface ocean carbonate chemistry in a variety of regions. Data are available at 10.7289/V5DB8043 and https://www.nodc.noaa.gov/ocads/oceans/Moorings/ndp097.html (Sutton et al., 2018). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are concerns about the future of coral reefs in the face of ocean acidification and warming, and although studies of these phenomena have advanced quickly, efforts have focused on pieces of the puzzle rather than integrating them to evaluate ecosystem-level effects. The field is now poised to begin this task, but there are information gaps that first must be overcome before progress can be made. Many of these gaps focus on calcification at the levels of cells, organisms, populations, communities, and ecosystem, and their closure will be made difficult by the complexity of the interdependent processes by which coral reefs respond to ocean acidification, with effects scaling from cells to ecosystems and from microns to kilometers. Existing ecological theories provide an important and largely untapped resource for overcoming these difficulties, and they offer great potential for integrating the effects of ocean acidification across scales on coral reefs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oceanic uptake of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) has acidified open-ocean surface waters by 0.1 pH units since preindustrial times. Despite unequivocal evidence of ocean acidification (OA) via open-oceanmeasurements for the past several decades, it has yet to be documented in near-shore and coral reef environments. A lack of long-term measurements from these environments restricts our understanding of the natural variability and controls of seawater CO2-carbonate chemistry and biogeochemistry, which is essential to make accurate predictions on the effects of future OA on coral reefs. Here, in a 5-y study of the Bermuda coral reef, we show evidence that variations in reef biogeochemical processes drive interannual changes in seawater pH and Ωaragonite that are partly controlled by offshore processes. Rapid acidification events driven by shifts toward increasing net calcification and net heterotrophy were observed during the summers of 2010 and 2011, with the frequency and extent of such events corresponding to increased offshore productivity. These events also coincided with a negative winter North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) index, which historically has been associated with extensive offshore mixing and greater primary productivity at the Bermuda Atlantic Time-series Study (BATS) site. Our results reveal that coral reefs undergo natural interannual events of rapid acidification due to shifts in reef biogeochemical processes that may be linked to offshore productivity and ultimately controlled by larger-scale climatic and oceanographic processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changes in CaCO3 dissolution due to ocean acidification are potentially more important than changes in calcification to the future accretion and survival of coral reef ecosystems. As most CaCO3 in coral reefs is stored in old permeable sediments, increasing sediment dissolution due to ocean acidification will result in reef loss even if calcification remains unchanged. Previous studies indicate that CaCO3 dissolution could be more sensitive to ocean acidification than calcification by reef organisms. Observed changes in net ecosystem calcification owing to ocean acidification could therefore be due mainly to increased dissolution rather than decreased calcification. In addition, biologically mediated calcification could potentially adapt, at least partially, to future ocean acidification, while dissolution, which is mostly a geochemical response to changes in seawater chemistry, will not adapt. Here, we review the current knowledge of shallow-water CaCO3 dissolution and demonstrate that dissolution in the context of ocean acidification has been largely overlooked compared with calcification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concerns have been raised about how coral reefs will be affected by ocean acidification, but projections of future seawater CO2 chemistry have focused solely on changes in the pH and aragonite saturation state (Ωa) of open-ocean surface seawater conditions surrounding coral reefs rather than the reef systems themselves. The seawater CO2 chemistry within heterogeneous reef systems can be significantly different from that of the open ocean depending on the residence time, community composition and the main biogeochemical processes occurring on the reef, that is, net ecosystem production (NEP = gross primary production − autotrophic and heterotrophic respiration) and net ecosystem calcification (NEC = gross calcification − gross CaCO3 dissolution), which combined act to modify seawater chemistry. On the basis of observations from the Bermuda coral reef, we show that a range of projected biogeochemical responses of coral reef communities to ocean acidification by the end of this century could partially offset changes in seawater pH and Ωa by an average of 12-24% and 15-31%, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Up to 90% of global coral reefs are predicted to be severely degraded by 2050 under "business-as-usual" scenarios. To meet the scale and scope of this challenge, we propose designing and demonstrating a multi-modal system that can incorporate data from remote sensing (satellites, aircraft, and aerial drones), acoustics, genetics, sensor arrays, and low-cost imaging systems. The latter will be collected by low-cost smart sensing and autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) guided by adaptive sampling modeling software and rapidly analyzed using automated machine learning systems. Development and deployment will be linked to extensive and diversity-enhancing training programs. The Coral Sentinel System will be globally deployed to enable rapid-response adaptive management and to build public engagement in conservation interventions to save coral reefs. Phase 1 (Year 1) will involve testing assumptions, coalition building, fundraising, and initial system development. Phase 2 (Years 2-4) will focus on engineering and development with a pilot deployment in the Caribbean. Phase 3 (Years 5-6) will involve system expansion and iteration along the Tropical Eastern Pacific corridor. Phase 4 (Years 7-10) will involve global deployment to over 50 reef sites. This will lead during the following decade (Phase 5) to provisioning of low-cost Sentinel systems to coastal communities globally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Model predictions suggest that the saturation state of surface ocean waters with respect to carbonate minerals will decline during the twenty-first century owing to increased invasion of atmospheric CO[sub 2]. As a result, calcareous organisms may have difficulty calcifying, leading to production of weaker skeletons and greater vulnerability to erosion. Alternatively, it has been suggested that there will be no significant impact on coral reef ecosystems because any changes in saturation state and pH will be restored by dissolution of metastable carbonate minerals. To resolve this controversy, we employ a physical-biogeochemical box model representative of the shallow-water ocean environment. Numerical simulations demonstrate that the carbonate saturation state of surface waters could significantly decrease and hamper the biogenic production of CaCO[sub 3] during the twenty-first century. Similarly, the average saturation state of marine pore waters could decline significantly, inducing dissolution of metastable carbonate phases within the porewater-sediment system. Such dissolution could buffer the carbon chemistry of the pore waters, but overlying surface waters of reefs and other shallow-water carbonate environments will not accumulate sufficient alkalinity to buffer pH or carbonate saturation state changes owing to invasion of atmospheric CO[sub 2]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ocean acidification may shift coral reefs from a state of net ecosystem calcification (+NEC) to net ecosystem dissolution (–NEC). Changes in NEC are typically inferred from either measured or calculated total alkalinity (TA) or the dissolved calcium (Ca) to salinity ratio relative to a reference value. The alkalinity anomaly technique has historically been the primary method to estimate NEC due to the greater analytical challenges and uncertainty associated with dissolved Ca measurements in seawater. However, this method assumes that changes in salinity-normalized TA are exclusively the result of calcification and dissolution processes. In many cases, this assumption is valid, but in some environments additional processes can significantly influence seawater TA (e.g., nutrient fluxes and redox processes). Seawater Ca is unaffected or less sensitive to these processes, and therefore, Ca and TA anomalies can be used to estimate absolute or relative changes in NEC with greater confidence. Here, we present a two-year time series of monthly seawater Ca and TA measurements across the Bermuda carbonate platform and the nearby Bermuda Atlantic Time-series Study (BATS) location offshore. High precision Ca measurements (±6 μmol kg−1) were conducted using an improved spectrophotometric titration system and showed mostly good agreement with changes in TA over the same spatial and temporal scales. Ca and TA measurements across the Bermuda platform showed seasonal fluctuations relative to offshore waters, with +NEC during summer months and near-zero or possible –NEC (net dissolution) during winter months. These seasonal patterns were most pronounced at the inshore locations with the longest residence times (10+ days), which allow stronger biogeochemical signals to develop relative to the offshore source water. Although obtaining high accuracy and precision Ca measurements remains challenging, parallel measurements of Ca and TA from both inshore and offshore waters over a multi-annual timescale could strengthen the validity of predictions for when and where a reef system, such as the Bermuda platform, may shift from +NEC to –NEC. • Two-year time-series of seawater Ca and TA across the Bermuda carbonate platform • High precision Ca measurements using a novel spectrophotometric titration system • Seasonal fluctuations in Ca and TA measurements relative to offshore waters • Ca and TA measurements showed good agreement over similar spatiotemporal scales. • Joint Ca and TA anomalies may provide more robust estimates of NEC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]