These data were published in Mollica\u00a0et al., 2019
\nAll cores were collected and analyzed using the same methods. Only live colonies were cored, establishing the top age, vertically i.e., parallel to the upward growth axis, and using either a pneumatic drill fitted with 3-cm diameter diamond tip coring bit or an hydraulic drill fitted with an 8-cm diameter bit. Core holes were sealed with a cement cap and underwater epoxy, secured flush with the colony surface to facilitate overgrowth of tissue and wound closure (e.g. Matson 2011), a 6 to 36-month process depending on the rate of coral growth and diameter of core. All cores were first air dried in the field, then oven dried at 60 \u00b0C, and CT scanned intact, together with density standards, on the Siemens Volume Zoom Helical Computerized Tomography (CT) Scanner at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution or the Siemens Biograph mCT scanner at the Biomedical Research Imaging Center (BRIC) at the University of North Carolina (protocol as per Barkley et al. 2015; DeCarlo et al. 2015).
\nLocation: Central Pacific Coral reefs, -5 to 5 latitude, Dongsha Atoll, Curacao, Barbados, Martinique coral reefs.
Coral cores were collected in the central equatorial Pacific (Central Pacific Coral reefs, -5 to 5 latitude, Dongsha Atoll, Curacao, Barbados, Martinique coral reefs) between March 1982 and June 2015. Stress bands were identified in the CT scan images of each core and quantified.
Stress bands and annual growth bands were identified in the CT scan images of each core and quantified using the automated code coralCT for MATLAB which traces the density of individual corallites within the 3 dimensional core (DeCarlo and Cohen 2016).\u00a0 Revisions to version 1.1 of coralCT, which was designed primarily for Porites spp., were made to accommodate the skeletal architecture of the Atlantic corals which have more prominent thecal walls than Porites. Specifically, a linear quadratic estimation algorithm (i.e. Kalman Filtering) improved polyp tracing along the core axis.\u00a0 The code was also revised to enable automated identification of stress bands (Barkley et al. 2018). Specifically, the density time-series for all corallites in the core (see DeCarlo et al. 2015, Data Repository Figure DR2) were averaged to create an \"ensemble\" mean density time series for all traceable corallites. The averaged density profile time-series was then detrended to account for shifts in mean density that may occur over time.
\nRegions where skeletal density exceeded 2 standard deviations above the whole-core mean, a threshold chosen to account for the range in natural seasonal and inter-annual density variability, were identified as stress bands. To exclude fine-scale density anomalies such as worm borings, stress bands were defined as having a minimum width of 1 mm. Each CT scan was visually inspected to validate the presence and location of stress bands identified by the automated program.
\nBCO-DMO Processing Notes:
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