Growth and mortality of corals on long-term monitoring sites in St. John, USVI.

Website: https://www.bco-dmo.org/dataset/735097
Data Type: Other Field Results
Version: 1
Version Date: 2018-05-17

Project
» LTREB Long-term coral reef community dynamics in St. John, USVI: 1987-2019 (St. John LTREB)
» RUI-LTREB Renewal: Three decades of coral reef community dynamics in St. John, USVI: 2014-2019 (RUI-LTREB)
ContributorsAffiliationRole
Edmunds, Peter J.California State University Northridge (CSUN)Principal Investigator
Ake, HannahWoods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI BCO-DMO)BCO-DMO Data Manager

Abstract
Growth and mortality of corals on long-term monitoring sites in St. John, USVI.


Coverage

Spatial Extent: Lat:18.32 Lon:-64.723
Temporal Extent: 1996 - 2016

Dataset Description

Data published in Ecology paper entitled “Intraspecific variation in growth rate is a poor predictor of fitness for reef corals”.


Methods & Sampling

Methods in paper (Edmunds 2017).


Data Processing Description

BCO-DMO Processing Notes:

- filled in blank cells with nd
- sorted by species
- added column names tag_number and coral_taxon
- replaced - with _ in column names


[ table of contents | back to top ]

Data Files

File
growth_mortality.csv
(Comma Separated Values (.csv), 127.46 KB)
MD5:4303007d8fbad314023a491f70d93a0b
Primary data file for dataset ID 735097

[ table of contents | back to top ]

Related Publications

Edmunds, P. J. (2017). Intraspecific variation in growth rate is a poor predictor of fitness for reef corals. Ecology, 98(8), 2191–2200. doi:10.1002/ecy.1912
Results
,
Methods

[ table of contents | back to top ]

Parameters

ParameterDescriptionUnits
tag_number

Coral tag number

unitless
coral_taxon

Coral taxon

unitless
years_1996_1997

Pair of years over which growth or death were recorded

millimeter per year
years_1997_1998

Pair of years over which growth or death were recorded

millimeter per year
years_1998_1999

Pair of years over which growth or death were recorded

millimeter per year
years_1999_2000

Pair of years over which growth or death were recorded

millimeter per year
years_2000_2001

Pair of years over which growth or death were recorded

millimeter per year
years_2001_2002

Pair of years over which growth or death were recorded

millimeter per year
years_2002_2003

Pair of years over which growth or death were recorded

millimeter per year
years_2003_2003

Pair of years over which growth or death were recorded

millimeter per year
years_2004_2005

Pair of years over which growth or death were recorded

millimeter per year
years_2005_2006

Pair of years over which growth or death were recorded

millimeter per year
years_2006_2007

Pair of years over which growth or death were recorded

millimeter per year
years_2007_2008

Pair of years over which growth or death were recorded

millimeter per year
years_2008_2009

Pair of years over which growth or death were recorded

millimeter per year
years_2009_2010

Pair of years over which growth or death were recorded

millimeter per year
years_2010_2011

Pair of years over which growth or death were recorded

millimeter per year
years_2011_2012

Pair of years over which growth or death were recorded

millimeter per year
years_2012_2013

Pair of years over which growth or death were recorded

millimeter per year
years_2013_2014

Pair of years over which growth or death were recorded

millimeter per year
years_2014_2015

Pair of years over which growth or death were recorded

millimeter per year

[ table of contents | back to top ]

Deployments

Edmunds_VINP

Website
Platform
Virgin Islands National Park
Start Date
1987-01-01
End Date
2016-09-01
Description
Studies of corals and hermit crabs


[ table of contents | back to top ]

Project Information

LTREB Long-term coral reef community dynamics in St. John, USVI: 1987-2019 (St. John LTREB)


Coverage: St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands; California State University Northridge


Long Term Research in Environmental Biology (LTREB) in US Virgin Islands:

From the NSF award abstract:
In an era of growing human pressures on natural resources, there is a critical need to understand how major ecosystems will respond, the extent to which resource management can lessen the implications of these responses, and the likely state of these ecosystems in the future. Time-series analyses of community structure provide a vital tool in meeting these needs and promise a profound understanding of community change. This study focuses on coral reef ecosystems; an existing time-series analysis of the coral community structure on the reefs of St. John, US Virgin Islands, will be expanded to 27 years of continuous data in annual increments. Expansion of the core time-series data will be used to address five questions: (1) To what extent is the ecology at a small spatial scale (1-2 km) representative of regional scale events (10's of km)? (2) What are the effects of declining coral cover in modifying the genetic population structure of the coral host and its algal symbionts? (3) What are the roles of pre- versus post-settlement events in determining the population dynamics of small corals? (4) What role do physical forcing agents (other than temperature) play in driving the population dynamics of juvenile corals? and (5) How are populations of other, non-coral invertebrates responding to decadal-scale declines in coral cover? Ecological methods identical to those used over the last two decades will be supplemented by molecular genetic tools to understand the extent to which declining coral cover is affecting the genetic diversity of the corals remaining. An information management program will be implemented to create broad access by the scientific community to the entire data set.

The importance of this study lies in the extreme longevity of the data describing coral reefs in a unique ecological context, and the immense potential that these data possess for understanding both the patterns of comprehensive community change (i.e., involving corals, other invertebrates, and genetic diversity), and the processes driving them. Importantly, as this project is closely integrated with resource management within the VI National Park, as well as larger efforts to study coral reefs in the US through the NSF Moorea Coral Reef LTER, it has a strong potential to have scientific and management implications that extend further than the location of the study.


RUI-LTREB Renewal: Three decades of coral reef community dynamics in St. John, USVI: 2014-2019 (RUI-LTREB)


Coverage: USVI


Describing how ecosystems like coral reefs are changing is at the forefront of efforts to evaluate the biological consequences of global climate change and ocean acidification. Coral reefs have become the poster child of these efforts. Amid concern that they could become ecologically extinct within a century, describing what has been lost, what is left, and what is at risk, is of paramount importance. This project exploits an unrivalled legacy of information beginning in 1987 to evaluate the form in which reefs will persist, and the extent to which they will be able to resist further onslaughts of environmental challenges. This long-term project continues a 27-year study of Caribbean coral reefs. The diverse data collected will allow the investigators to determine the roles of local and global disturbances in reef degradation. The data will also reveal the structure and function of reefs in a future with more human disturbances, when corals may no longer dominate tropical reefs.

The broad societal impacts of this project include advancing understanding of an ecosystem that has long been held emblematic of the beauty, diversity, and delicacy of the biological world. Proposed research will expose new generations of undergraduate and graduate students to natural history and the quantitative assessment of the ways in which our planet is changing. This training will lead to a more profound understanding of contemporary ecology at the same time that it promotes excellence in STEM careers and supports technology infrastructure in the United States. Partnerships will be established between universities and high schools to bring university faculty and students in contact with k-12 educators and their students, allow teachers to carry out research in inspiring coral reef locations, and motivate children to pursue STEM careers. Open access to decades of legacy data will stimulate further research and teaching.



[ table of contents | back to top ]

Funding

Funding SourceAward
NSF Division of Environmental Biology (NSF DEB)
NSF Division of Environmental Biology (NSF DEB)

[ table of contents | back to top ]