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.
Research Focus The Moorea Coral Reef Long-Term Ecological Research site (MCR LTER) is an interdisciplinary, landscape-scale program that seeks to (1) advance understanding of the factors that influence the resilience of coral reef ecosystems and (2) to better forecast how coral reef ecosystems will be affected by slowly-changing environmental drivers. The MCR LTER site consists of a coral reef complex that encircles the 37-mile perimeter of the island of Moorea in French Polynesia. Coral reefs are among the most diverse and productive of all ecosystems and have immense ecological, social and economic value. Unfortunately, the world's coral reefs are disappearing at an alarming rate due to the effects of coastal development, over-fishing and multiple factors associated with global climate change. The Moorea Coral Reef LTER works to explore the effects of these external drivers on the fate of coral reefs and advance understanding to enable forecasts of the behavior of coral reef ecosystems. Research Outcomes Moorea Coral Reef LTER researchers found that rapid body and population growth of herbivorous parrotfishes following a major disturbance that killed most coral on the fore reef of Moorea prevented a massive invasion of seaweeds that would have precluded juvenile corals from recolonizing. Young parrotfish first recruit to a nursery coral found in lagoons before moving offshore to the fore reef, which indicates that in addition to preventing over-fishing of key herbivores, protecting their nursery habitat is essential for maintaining reef resilience. While it has long been known that the amount of coral on a reef influences the number and type of fishes present, studies by MCR LTER researchers show that the reverse often is true - the type of fishes present can markedly enhance the amount of coral on a reef. They found that certain corals (acroporids) are more vulnerable to coral predators than others (pocilloporids), which helps explain why persistence and recovery of staghorn acropora, a major habitat for fishes and invertebrates, is governed by a territorial fish that protects its coral host from coral predators. In addition to corals benefiting by protection by fish, other studies revealed that corals grew substantially better when colonized by fishes due to local fertilization by their nitrogenous waste. MCR LTER studies of fish – coral interactions have revealed critical but previously unknown roles that fishes play in the resilience and dynamics of corals. In another Moorea Coral Reef LTER study, researchers found that the more flexible corals are about their algal residents, the more sensitive they are to environmental changes. The patterns show that coral generalists are some of the most environmentally sensitive. The better scientists understand how corals respond to stress, the better we will be able to forecast and manage reef communities. Similarly, MCR scientists found that the response of organisms on tropical reefs to ocean acidification may be species-specific, with some species of corals and coralline algae affected more than others. They also discovered that more acidic oceans may lead to changes in patterns of biodiversity in a high-carbon dioxide world. In addition, Moorea Coral Reef LTER scientists are developing biological models that help scale from genes to the whole community to describe the conditions under which abrupt community shifts from coral to seaweeds can occur and persist, to describe the response of coral to a warmer more acidic ocean, and to evaluate conditions promoting high coral cover in an increasingly disturbed world. Education & Outreach MCR LTER maintains a website designed to inform students and the public about the ocean, coral reefs and the research it conducts. The site's features include the Marine Life of Moorea Encyclopedia, where visitors can learn about the organisms that make up Moorea’s coral reef ecosystem. The Lesson Plan Library contains free standards-based curricula available for download that focus on the coral reef ecosystem and MCR LTER research. MCR LTER also offers K-12 teachers the opportunity to participate in scientific research at the MCR LTER field site and develop curricula based on their research findings. MCR LTER also hosts annually 110-115 fourth graders from Washington Accelerated School in South Pasadena who visit UCSB to learn about marine biology and MCR science, and the site participates in the REEF (Research Experience & Education Facility), which is an interactive marine educational facility at UCSB that serves over 10,000 K-12 and public visitors annually.
