Intellectual Merit: The Moorea Coral Reef (MCR) LTER is an interdisciplinary research and education program that was established in 2004, to explore the joint effects of climate and disturbance on the structure and function of coral reefs. The study area is the reef complex that surrounds the island of Moorea in French Polynesia. The initial focus of (MCR I) was to advance understanding of major controls of processes that modulate ecosystem function, shape community structure and diversity, and determine abundance and dynamics of constituent populations. The LTER Investigators build on this foundation by adapting a unifying conceptual framework (US LTER 2007) and developing a set of research themes to organize the MCR II research program and facilitate cross-site collaboration. Coral reef ecosystems appear especially vulnerable to changes in abiotic drivers associated with Global Climate Change (GCC). These arise from two mechanisms related to increasing concentrations of atmospheric CO2: rising seawater temperature due to greenhouse warming, and changing seawater chemistry known as Ocean Acidification (OA). A paradigm shift occurred within the past decade regarding the relative importance of these climate-related drivers to coral reefs. The focus initially was on rising seawater temperature because it triggered several large-scale, conspicuous coral bleaching (i.e., loss of the endosymbiont Symbiodinium) events. There now is widespread recognition that OA and its interaction with rising temperature have the potential to cause even more sweeping changes. These drivers occur against a backdrop of other press (e.g., fishing) and pulse (e.g., storms) perturbations. During MCR I, a brief outbreak of crown-of-thorns seastars (COTS) resulted in the death of virtually all coral on the fore reef of Moorea, bringing issues related to state change, resilience (recovery), interactive effects and indirect cascades to the forefront.
The fundamental question that the MRC LTER Team will address in MCR II is:
How do drivers that operate over different spatial and temporal scales interact to influence the structure and function of coral reef ecosystems?
The project incorporates three organizing themes: (i) interactive effects among drivers, (ii) indirect effects arising from structure-function linkages, and (iii) resilience and resistance in relation to structure-function feedbacks. The six goals of MCR II are to: (a) continue building long-term datasets on physical drivers, community dynamics and ecosystem processes; (b) maintain a long-term resilience experiment; (c) contribute to understanding of how Global Climate Change drivers will affect coral reefs and what factors influence resistance and resilience; (d) develop and test general ecological theory; (e) continue to improve our information management system to more fully meet the needs of the LTER network and broader scientific community; and (f) enhance our outreach components.
Broader Impacts: Coral reefs are not just ecologically important – they yield upwards of $375 billion annually in goods and services (most of it in the developing world) that are vulnerable to human activities and climate forcing. Hence this research has relevance and application to resource managers, policy makers and stakeholders worldwide. Broader impacts arising from the educational activities include postdoctoral mentoring, research that integrates undergraduate and graduate training, progress towards an ethnically diverse MCR student community, active participation of K-12 teachers in MCR research, incorporation of MCR findings in teaching curricula, participation of MCR faculty and graduate students in the Three Seas Program, and involvement of faculty and students from predominately undergraduate and minority-serving institutions. Additional impacts are realized by outreach efforts, including partnerships with three local schools that serve socio-economically disadvantaged and minority students, and with the Atitia Center on Moorea to reach Tahitians. While the information-rich web site will continue to be a primary outreach portal, the investigators plan to develop a partnership with another web-based entity to target middle-school students.
