NSF Award
2307785
Coral reefs occupy less than 1% of the ocean floor yet host more than 25% of all marine biodiversity. Reef ecosystems provide shoreline protection, pharmaceuticals, fishing and tourism revenue, and significant protein to more than one billion people. Currently, coral reefs are under great threat due to rising global ocean temperatures leading to coral bleaching, habitat degradation and loss of ecosystem function. Recent oceanographic advances show that while global ocean temperature rises, regional scale ocean currents, upwelling and internal waves play essential roles in coral survivorship and ecosystem preservation as the ocean continues to warm. This project aims to uncover the mechanisms of this observed phenomenon in a model reef upwelling system in the southern Red Sea. This study will enable identification of reef ecosystems around the world that will remain resilient to climate change due to shifts in regional oceanography. This project will involve support for a U.S. based conference with international scientists who are leading conservation efforts in the Indo-Pacific and the Red Sea. Additionally, students at the University of Rhode Island will contribute to the project and will be mentored in oceanographic data science and analytical chemistry. Overall, this project aims to uncover the complex response of coral reefs to regional oceanographic patterns and global ocean warming with an emphasis on international collaboration and coral reef conservation.<br/><br/>Growing evidence suggests that reefs that experience seasonal upwelling or internal waves could serve as vital coral refugia in the next ~50 years. Deep water shoaling onto reefs provides pelagic subsidies in the form of essential nutrients, particles, and plankton that can enhance coral feeding and growth. But there is an essential knowledge gap regarding how reefs that experience upwelling will respond to these subsidies and how this influences coral survivorship to rising global ocean temperatures. The proposed work aims to connect “bottom-up” oceanographic forcing of planktonic food webs and link this to coral trophic dynamics and the subsequent thermal stress tolerance outfalls of the realized trophic niche of corals. Using a multi-faceted analytical chemistry approach involving compound-specific isotope analysis of amino acids, fatty acid analysis and recently developed “stress-test” detectors, the project plans to test three hypotheses. The three hypotheses are aimed to answer vital questions regarding open-ocean reef connectivity, variations in coral feeding to upwelling and coral stress response due to shifts in mixotrophy. This work will answer key mechanistic unknowns of upwelling on coral reefs and enable predictive power for coral survivorship on upwelling reefs around the world.<br/><br/>This project is jointly funded by GEO/OCE Postdoctoral Fellowships Program and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
