Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles

ORCID

0000-0003-3556-7616

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Limnology and Oceanography Letters

ISSN

2378-2242

Publication Date

12-20-2019

Abstract

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.

DOI

10.1002/lol2.10129

First Page

1

Last Page

11

Comments

©2019 The Authors. Limnology and Oceanography published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography.

Additional Comments

Australian Research Council grant #: DP150102092; NSF grant #s: 1650112, 1255042, 1538495

Peer Reviewed

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