This blog post is going to further expand on the United Nations reports on Climate Change and how its critical to maintain the global temperature at a steady rate to allow fewer negative impacts on ecosystems, biodiversity, food security and more but mainly talk about coral reefs!
Throughout this report, it goes in depth about a lot of different temperature impacts such as; warmer lands, human inducing global warming, intensity and frequency in climate, how to limit global warming can reduce the extreme drought, precipitation deficits and much more. There is one piece in this report that talks about Coral Reefs and the dangers they face throughout this all.
The image above shows different factors that are impacting the coral reefs!
Coral reefs are found along the coastlines where they habitat for over a million species, they harbour and help with food, income, coastal protection, cultural context and so many other services in the coastal regions.
They are usually found under the water deep in about 150 metres and are dependent on light, making themselves higher than the deep-water coral reefs. The warm- water coral reefs are dealing with high levels of risk due to climate change. They would be able to better work in an environment where the temperature remained around 1.5 C compared to if the temperature was higher, they would all disappear.
Due to recent climate change there has been mass coral bleaching and mortality occurring, the ocean warming, and the acidification can cause slow calcification and slow growth making the coral reef less competitive. The biggest issue with coral reef disappearing is the loss of fish and many other dependent species. The possible regeneration of the loss of coral reefs can be determined by refugia and if the coral reefs can be protected from risks.
Damaging coral reefs will remove resources that are needed for coastline regions, and how dependent millions of people are to the value ecosystems. The report outlines that the communities need to develop a new sustainable industry and how reduce the dependency on the threaten ecosystems. Furthermore, they need t make changes to provide support and protection for the coral reef.
The coral reefs need to be protected to help keep the surrounding ecosystems and with climate change really increasing risks, they need help in aiding against the heat stress!
Uk, Sally Brown, Arona Diedhiou, Ivory Coast, R Allen Uk, and Peter Berry Canada. 2018. “Impacts of 1.5°C of Global Warming on Natural and Human Systems.”
Applied Plant Ecology Winter 2020 