CALL FOR ABSTRACTS ON CORAL REEFS AND ENVIRONMENTAL / CLIMATIC CHANGE AT
ASLO 2011 (PUERTO RICO) 

The 2011 Aquatic Sciences Meeting for the American Society for Limnology &
oceanography (ASLO) will take place in Puerto Rico next February (13-18
February 2011) and focus on limnology and oceanography in a changing world
(www.aslo.org/meetings/sanjuan2011). As part of 6 sessions proposed on
corals and coral reefs, two will be dedicated to coral reefs and
environmental/climatic change (S31 and S36, described in more detail below).
Together these two sessions aim to explore the most recent developments in
our understanding of how the environment (including anthropogenic activity
and climate) regulates reef form and function, and consequently the likely
future for coral reefs given predicted environmental and climatic change.
Abstract submission is now open (www.aslo.org/meetings/sanjuan2011) and we
welcome contributions from across the coral reef research, conservation &
management communities. CLOSING DATE FOR SUBMISSION OF ABSTRACTS IS 11
OCTOBER 2010.  Please do not hesitate to contact the session conveners for
more details.

S36: INTERACTIVE AND REPEAT EXPOSURE EFFECTS OF ENVIRONMENTAL PERTURBATIONS
UPON CORALS AND CORAL REEF PROCESSES (David J Suggett, [log in to unmask];
Andrea G Grottoli, [log in to unmask]; Mark E. Warner, [log in to unmask]).

Coral reefs are considered flagship aquatic ecosystems given their
disproportionately high diversity and productivity but also their apparent
extreme sensitivity to environmental change. Intensive research efforts in
recent years have largely focused on how reefs and reef organisms respond to
broad scale (regional to global) changes in climate or smaller scale (local)
changes in eutrophication, sedimentation, and over- exploitation. Most
experimentally based studies have targeted the influence of individual
environmental factors in isolation (e.g. light, temperature, pH, or
nutrients). However, observationally based studies implicitly account for
the influence of multiple environmental perturbations acting simultaneously
and/or repeatedly. As such, our ability to effectively predict future reef
form and function remain fundamentally limited. It is increasingly
recognized that interactive or repeat exposure effects of environmental
perturbations can (i) cumulatively lower net reef resilience by acting
synergistically at any one time or repeatedly over time; and/or (ii)
maintain or even promote net reef resilience by acting antagonistically by
dampening the gross influence of each factor. Such key multivariate effects
remain poorly understood. Therefore, this session will consider the net
influence of multiple and/or repeat exposure to environmental perturbations
upon reef process, at scales from individual organisms (the molecular to
holobiont) to entire reef systems.

S31: CORAL REEFS IN A CRYSTAL BALL:  WHAT WILL BE THEIR FUTURE? (Pamela
Hallock, [log in to unmask]; Bernhard Riegl, [log in to unmask]; Edwin A.
Hernández-Delgado, [log in to unmask])

In the mid-20th Century, coral reefs were best known where clear ocean
waters bathed tropical shorelines.  Today roughly half of the world’s
shallow-water reefs have been lost or seriously degraded. Human activities
are sending agricultural, industrial and urban wastes and chemicals, along
with increased sediment loads, into coastal waters.  As a result, waters
have become more turbid and fringing reefs have been buried in sediment or
overgrown by algae.  Rapidly rising human populations have increasingly
exploited fisheries, in some places with Malthusian overfishing.  Beginning
in the 1970s, even corals in clear-water offshore reefs began to decline –
from diseases and bleaching. More recently, increasing sea-surface
temperature and ocean acidification have emerged as critical threats to the
potential of corals to even build reefs.  Do shallow-water coral reefs have
a future?  Will future coral populations be limited to shallow hardbottom or
deeper mesophotic communities? Can ecological functions be sustained in
changing coral reefs?  We invite scientists dealing with any aspect of the
response of coral reefs to environmental change, whether to local, regional
or global change processes, to participate in this session.  We invite not
only coral researchers, but also others working with reef-related species,
populations or communities, or environmental factors that may impact these
communities.