WAMSI 2 - Kimberley Node - 1.3.2 - Climate Change Reef Calcification

The overall objectives of this project are to understand how corals, the key ecosystem engineers on tropical reefs, have adapted and will respond in the future to the extreme variations in physical (e.g. light, temperature, water motion) and chemical (e.g. pCO2, oxygen, and nutrients) conditions characteristic of the Kimberley coastal region.

Through a series of field and laboratory experiments, we aimed to:

1. Study seasonal calcification rates of common Kimberley corals over two years;

2. Assess their thermal tolerance and establish the first bleaching thresholds for this region; and

3. Reconstruct their resilience to historical climate and environmental extremes using geochemical proxies in coral cores.

Data stored on Pawsey Data Store and UWA IRDS store. The raw data from the 2017 paper are also archived in the Pangaea database.