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Gazette Day reports:
In the year 2016, there was a heatwave that affected many parts of the world. The extreme temperatures were especially felt in and around the continent of Australia. As a result of the heatwave, the waters around the Great Barrier Reef warmed considerably. Scientists were worried that with the oceans already warming due to global climate change, the additional heat stress might cause considerable damage to the Great Barrier Reef.
After the heatwave subsided, a team of scientists conducted tests to find out how the heatwave damaged the reef. Extensive aerial surveys were conducted. These surveys concluded that a great deal of the reef had bleaching that had killed off many parts of the reef. [...] The surveys found that 90 percent of the corals in the reef suffered at least some type of bleaching. The worst damage was on the northernmost third of the reef. In this section, much of the damage was caused by the initial rise in temperature.
The other damage occurred later. The coral reefs depend on a symbiotic relationship with a certain type of algae. Over the course of a few months after the heating event, the algae separated from the reef causing additional reef death.
During the heating event in 2016, one-third of the coral reefs in the world were bleached and damaged in some way. The reefs do have the ability to come back from this [heat-induced damage] as long as the damaging events are not too frequent.
Global warming transforms coral reef assemblages (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0041-2) (DX)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday April 25 2018, @03:41PM (1 child)
Hmm I was thinking about biomass on a planetary scale, like the oxygen level on the other side of the planet where I live will not collapse because the reef died, or if all that "reef stuff" died and decayed it wouldn't release enough CO2 or methane to affect the entire planet.
Value on a human scale given by humans is probably a different topic. Value in the sense of nobody in Chicago is going to run out of O2 because the algae on the reef in Aus died is more what I was thinking of where it just doesn't matter.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday April 25 2018, @04:14PM
Ohhh-kay. Except, oxygen isn't exactly bio. Oxygen is a chemical, or more accurately, an element, which readily combines with itself to create a chemicl - O2. And, it just as readily reacts with several other chemicals, like iron, carbon, aluminum, hydrogen, etc. Biology as we know it is largely dependent on oxygen, but the oxygen isn't biological in nature. As I understand the term "biomass", oxygen isn't really part of that mass, except when it has reacted with other chemicals to produce the various hydrocarbons, of which biology is composed.
But, to address the point you are making: I really don't know if, or how, the collapse of the reefs may or may not snowball into some dire consequences that do affect you and I. The doomsayers want very badly to convince us that the snowball affect is going to wipe us off the face of the earth, and very soon. A lot of other people insist that it will have no effect. Me? I dunno. What I do know is, we aren't very good stewards of the earth that we have inherited.