...OCEAN ACIDIFICATION- ESSAY THURSDAY, JANUARY 24TH, 2012 Covering more than 70 percent of the Earth’s surface, the ocean is one of planet Earth’s most distinguishing characteristics. Over recent years, human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels have increased the amount of carbon dioxide gas emitted to the atmosphere and the amount that dissolves into the ocean. Now, so much carbon dioxide has been absorbed by the ocean that the chemistry of seawater is changing, causing the ocean to become more acidic. THE CARBON CYCLE Carbon dioxide is a critical part of Earth’s atmosphere; it traps heat and prevents the Earth from being covered in ice. Normally, the Earth’s carbon cycle maintains a natural balance of carbon in the atmosphere, land, and ocean through the “breathing of the planet”. However, since the beginning of the industrial era, emissions of carbon dioxide have climbed, and now are exceeding the capacity of the carbon cycle to maintain equilibrium between the atmosphere and ocean. Excess carbon dioxide traps more heat in the atmosphere, which changes the Earth’s climate. Not all of the excess carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere. Scientists estimate that one-third of all the carbon dioxide produced by human activities has been absorbed by the ocean. The ocean’s removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere has undoubtedly helped curb the extent of climate change—but this benefit has come at a cost. The absorption of carbon dioxide is fundamentally changing...
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...Coral Reefs vs. Climate Change Corals reefs around the world have been fighting climate change for just over two centuries. This problem hasn’t caught much attention to the average human eye, but it’s about time everybody realizes how this is affecting their everyday lives as well. Coral bleaching is one of the main concerns with coral reefs around the world. Coral bleaching can be fatal to coral reefs, which in return could hurt us in the future. Ocean acidification is another problem that coral reefs are facing around the world. Not only is it harmful to the coral reefs but harmful to marine life as well. Although these are all negative actions towards coral reefs there can be a bright...
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...Rachel Bowman Megan Hodgson ENG 201 1 April 2016 Annotated Bibliography: Ocean Acidification Research Questions: What is ocean acidification? What are the causes? What are the consequences? Blackford, Jerry C. "Predicting the Impacts of Ocean Acidification: Challenges from an Ecosystem Perspective." Journal of Marine Systems 60.2-4 (April 2010): 12-18. Science Direct. Web. 23 Mar. 2016. This journal answers all three of my posed research questions. Ocean acidification is marine uptake of carbon dioxide emissions. These emissions can come from two sources, anthropogenic: originating in human activity, and natural causes: respiration, decomposition, etc. The consequences range widely and greatly depend on future rates. There could potentially be changes in composition, size, structure and succession in ecosystems that would then lead to greater consequences, energy flow and resources. In the greater picture food sources and economics could also be a resulting consequence. The journal includes several models that try to predict the future pH of the ocean and the effects each pH will have. Dupont, S., O. Ortega-martínez, and M. Thorndyke. "Impact of Near-Future Ocean Acidification on Echinoderms." Ecotoxicology 19.3 (2010): 449-62. ProQuest. Web. 31 Mar. 2016. This article focuses on how severe the issue is. By 2100 carbon dioxide concentrations are predicted to double. The ocean, being a major carbon dioxide sink, absorbs more than half the excess carbon, causing huge impacts...
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...the conditions which provide the best environment for the growth of coral and explain how coral may be threatened by changes to those conditions. A coral reef provides one of the most important natural habitats in the world, sheltering enormous amounts of biodiversity with its solid calcium carbonate skeleton. More than 25 percent of all fish biodiversity on the planet Earth is associated with the coral reef ecosystem. Coral reefs require fairly specific environmental conditions in order to thrive. Coral reefs and the zooxanthellae algae living within the cell walls of coral polyps must have adequate sunlight and warm salt water - water that gets no colder than 64.4 degrees Fahrenheit (18 degrees Celsius).Optimal conditions for coral growth require water temperatures between 73.4 and 84.2 degrees Fahrenheit (23 to 29 degrees Celsius). Coral reefs survive best in the waters between 30 degrees north and 30 degrees south of the equator, mostly in the Pacific and Indian oceans. They also thrive in clear waters with little or no floating particles that can filter out or block direct sunlight. Shallow-water coral grows approximately 3.9 inches (9.9 centimeters) per year, given these optimal conditions. For example, the coasts alongside Oman are an ideal place for coral growth. While tropical shallow-water coral reefs have been studied much more extensively, there are also species of coral that live in deep-water conditions, from about 50 to 2,000 meters (about 165 to 6,560...
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...Human Impacts on the Environment: Ocean Acidification Ecological human effects on the planet are now about 40% greater than the planet can support in a sustainable fashion (Grossman, 2010). One of the many areas with significant damage is the marine biosphere. Ocean acidification is a great threat to marine and subsequently human life. The pH level in the ocean has been a relatively constant 8.15 to 8.25 and organisms have evolved under these circumstances for over 50 million years. However since the end of the Industrial Revolution, worldwide burning of fossil fuels and human innovations such as concrete manufacture have resulted in the release of more than 440 billion metric tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is dissolved in seawater which causes the concentration of hydrogen ions to increase. Approximately half of the carbon dioxide produced by fossil fuels is absorbed by the ocean. Were this not the case, climate change would be far worse. The term ocean acidification pertains to the lowering of the ocean’s pH. As carbon dioxide dissolves in water it forms carbonic acid, and as more and more is assimilated the pH decreases, and the seawater becomes less alkaline. Consequently the hydrogen ions react with carbonate ions in the water, forming bicarbonate. This causes the carbonate ion numbers to be greatly reduced, which in turn has a substantial effect upon the many species that take in carbonate from the water...
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...Coral reefs form some of the most diverse ecosystems on earth. They occupy less than 1% of the worlds ocean surface, about half the area of France, yet they provide a home for 25% of all marine species, including fishes, molluscs, echinoderms and sponges. They are most commonly found at shallow depths in tropical waters, particularly in the Pacific Ocean. Coral reefs deliver ecosystem services to tourism, fisheries and shoreline protection. The annual global economic value of coral reefs has been estimated at $375 billion. It is believed to have emerged more than 540 million years ago. New species originate 50% faster in coral reefs than in any other habitats. The fossil records show that reefs have been remarkably successful in surviving through large environmental disturbances. However the combination of drastic environmental changes that we're seeing today, such as degraded water quality, depleted fish stocks, coral bleaching, ocean acidification and loss of habitat causes them to be under great threat. Coral reefs are perhaps one of the greatest but, least known of wonders of our world. There are three different kinds of coral reefs. There are fringing, barrier, and atoll. Fringing reefs are attached to margins of an island or continent, rough, table like surface, as much as 1 kilometer wide. On their seaward side they slope steeply to the ocean floor. Fringing reefs grow in shallow water near the shore and prefer dry climates with limited river runoff. There are...
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...As a result, pollution and hence, declining water quality have proved to be one of the main threats to the Great Barrier Reef. More than 90% of the pollution comes from farm water run-off, having been polluted due to overgrazing, fertiliser and pesticide use. Harmful concentrations of these pesticides have been discovered up to 60km into the Great Barrier Reef with a third of the reef now exposed to herbicides. These chemicals wash into rivers and estuaries and flow into coral reefs, harming marine plants and the animals that feed on them. Sediment amounts have quadrupled over the past 150 years causing the resilience of the Great Barrier Reef to worsen, reducing its ability to absorb shocks and recover from...
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...The average pH of ocean surface waters has already fallen by about 0.1 units, from about 8.2 to 8.1 since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Estimates of projected future atmospheric and oceanic CO2 concentrations indicate that, by the end of this century, the average surface ocean pH could be 0.2 to 0.4 lower than it is today (IPCC 2014). The two main influences on sea level rise are the melting of land ice of glaciers and the ice cap on greenland and the change in density as result of higher water temperatures (Milne et al, 2009). Of the predicted 1.5 to 2.0 mm sea level rise per year, the biggest part will come from meltwater flowing into the ocean, this is about 1.4 mm per year (Miller & Douglas, 2004). In Figure 4 below, the...
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...Raekwon Filmore Clarkson University Department of Biology Spring 2018 BY-445 Background Coral reefs are one of nature’s most diverse ecosystems. The variation in organisms and plant life is what drives many scientists to understand how something so unique can occur. Because coral reefs are so diverse, they help the environment they inhabit in various ways. Coral reefs are biologically diverse and economically important to the ecosystems of the planet. The reason for this importance to the ecosystems is that it provides services that are essential to human life and industries through fisheries, coastal protection, building materials, new biochemical compounds,...
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...Bleaching occurs often when the coral undergoes specific stress normally to do with environmental factors. Due to the enhancement of the greenhouse effect mass bleaching events are becoming an ever growing population with all the coral being bleached all at once (Parry et al., 2007; Lough 2008; Hoegh-Guldberg et al., 2007). Coral's live in warm, shallow waters so even an increase in sea surface temperature of 1 degrees can cause the coral to expel their symbiotic algae, in future years to come scientists expect a 2+ degree rise in sea temperature by 2050-2100, more mass bleaching events are expected to occur (Hoegh-Guldberg et al., 2007). Not only is oceanic temperature an issue, ocean acidification is another harmful factor towards corals. Oceanic pH has started to lower due to oceans absorbing about one-third of the atmospheric carbon dioxide, making it more acidic. Changes in pH therefore cause problems for coral as their capability to create their calcium carbonate skeleton deteriorates, as a more acidic pH lowers the saturation state of calcium carbonate (Orr et al., 2005). Estimates suggest that by the end of this century the surface pH of the oceans will decrease by 0.1 from 0.3 to 0.4 (Calderia and Wickett,...
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...offshore dumping Zoning Increasing funding for farmers to reduce run off through water quality- from budget. Budget increased by 25 million per annum for 4 years in oder to restore reef as of 1st July 2014. GBRMPA 1995 Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Act 25 year plan. Justification; why save the reef? tourist attraction 7th wonder of the word contributes 6 billion to Australian economy produces 63 000 jobs The Great Barrier Reef is the longest coral reef structure in the world extending over 2300 km from papua new guinea on Queensland’s east coast. It renowned for it visibility from space considering it holds more than 2900 individual reefs and is home to over ‘6 300’ different species (wwf). Although this ecosystem is protected as a World Heritage site, it has still been significantly impacted by human activities, including pollution, mining and urban run off. Traditional management strategies have been a vast help over the past thousands of year but the severity of human impacts have dramatically increased in the past 50 years and contemporary strategies have been put into practise in attempt to reduce these. While the Great Barrier Reef stands as a beautiful testament to the power of natural construction, in recent years there have emerged numerous threats to the existence of the reef that loom and make its future fairly uncertain which is mainly due to the influence of man. Global warming is caused by the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere which...
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...a Coral Reef Early Warning System station in Discovery Bay, Jamaica, utilized in conducting ocean acidification studies near coral reef areas [edit]Australia Main article: Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef The Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest coral reef system.[46][47][48][49] The reef is located in the Coral Sea. A large part of the reef is protected by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. Particular environmental pressures include runoff, salinity fluctuations, climate change, cyclic crown-of-thorns outbreaks, overfishing, and spills or improper ballast discharge. [edit]Southeast Asia See also: Southeast Asia coral reefs Southeast Asian coral reefs are at risk from damaging fishing practices (such as cyanide and blast fishing), overfishing, sedimentation, pollution and bleaching. Activities including education, regulation and the establishment of marine protected areas help protect these reefs. [edit]Indonesia Indonesia is home to one third of the world's corals covering nearly 85,000 square kilometres (33,000 sq mi) and one quarter of its fish species. Indonesia's coral reefs are located in the heart of the Coral Triangle and have fallen victim to destructive fishing, tourism and bleaching. Data from 414 reef monitoring stations in 2000 found that only 6% are in excellent condition, while 24% are in good condition, and approximately 70% are in poor to fair condition.[50] [edit]Philippines In 2007, Reef Check, the world's largest reef conservation organization...
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...Status and Trends of Caribbean Coral Reefs: 1970-2012 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Jeremy Jackson “Perhaps the most striking aspect of plant life on a coral reef is the general lack of it. It seems anomalous to even the casual observer that tropical reefs, notable for their dazzling profusion of animal life, are almost devoid of conspicuous plants.†Sylvia Earle, 1972 INTRODUCTION Sylvia Earle’s early observations upon Caribbean reefs describe a forgotten world. Caribbean coral reefs have suffered massive losses of corals since the early 1980s due to a wide range of human impacts including explosive human population growth, overfishing, coastal pollution, global warming, and invasive species. The consequences include widespread collapse of coral populations, increases in large seaweeds (macroalgae), outbreaks of coral bleaching and disease, and failure of corals to recover from natural disturbances such as hurricanes. Alarm bells were set off by the 2003 publication in the journal Science that live coral cover had been reduced from more than 50% in the 1970s to just 10% today. This dramatic decline was closely followed by widespread and severe coral bleaching in 2005, which was in turn followed by high coral mortality due to disease at many reef locations. Healthy corals are increasingly rare on the intensively studied reefs of the Florida reef tract, US Virgin Islands, and Jamaica. Moreover, two of the formerly most abundant species, the elkhorn coral Acropora palmata and staghorn...
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...PROJECT TOPIC : GLOBAL WARMING MOHAMED HASSAN SPN150597 Contents 1. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................ 2 2. DEFINITION GLOBAL WARMING .................................................................................................. 3 3. WHY DOES GLOBAL WARMING OCCURE? ............................................................................................ 3 5. CAUSES OF GLOBAL WARMING ................................................................................................... 5 6. EFFECTS OF GLOBAL WARMING .................................................................................................. 9 How will climate change affect you? Your community? The environment around you? .................... 12 4. SOLUTIONS FOR THE GLOBAL WARMING ............................................................................... 13 5. OTHER EFFECTIVE WAYS TO PREVENT GLOBAL WARMING ............................................. 15 1. Plant Trees and Bamboo................................................................................................................. 16 2. Ride a Bike ...................................................................................................................................... 16 3. Buy Less Stuff...................................................................................
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...Oceanic Damage: What have we done to our planet? Negative press, research, and reports from around the world raised issues regarding our problematic oceans. Misguided and crucial errors humans make harm oceans using unsustainable practices which eventually eliminate many species of sea creatures and destroy the water they inhabit and we need for our survival as well. Countries around the world have been heavily positively praised while some have been lauded negatively, for instance, the United States. A crying shame how most countries on Earth seem in continuing spiraling towards ecological harm in an abundance of forms, regarding ocean garbage, coral reefs and oil spills over a twenty-five year period have caused our oceans’ ecology suffering to escalate. Incidents regarding a floating garbage patch in the Pacific, even cruise ships repeating sewage and garbage dumping are atrocious. The problem is, most people do not pay attention and take situations such as these as non-existent. Evidence documented over decades suggest our oceans’ trouble will continue unless change happens sooner rather than later. Change in how we respond to problems should not take years for resolution, because some of the damage may be minute and builds up over time, while some comes in big bunches that there is not time to waste in resolving. In some of these cases, years elapsed before any significant progress had been made, resulting in more damage than first observed. The problems have similarities...
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