Scaling-up restorative assisted evolution on Anthropocene coral reefs
Lead Research Organisation:
Newcastle University
Department Name: Sch of Natural & Environmental Sciences
Abstract
NERC : Liam Lachs : NE/S007512/1
Coral reefs face unprecedented declines and ecological changes worldwide due to the impact of humans. This is particularly worrying as coral reefs support fisheries and tourism livelihoods, they act as a coastal protection from storms, and also harbour unique biodiversity. Even when local disturbances like fishing or nutrient enrichment are banned, mass coral bleaching events have still occurred on a global scale. This is caused by severe marine heatwaves. As the oceans heat up due to climate change, marine heatwaves become ever more frequent and last for longer periods. Without action, the socio-ecological services provided by coral reefs may be lost within 3-5 decades due to climate change.
Unfortunately, the global reduction in carbon emissions needed to slow the greenhouse effect and mitigate these ecological impacts is going to be very difficult to achieve under current agreements like the Paris Agreement. Therefore, it is now critical to consider how active management interventions can be used to support the resilience of coral reefs in the future. CORALASSIST, our lab group in Newcastle University, United Kingdom, is working on this topic. We are testing coral restoration techniques combined with selective breeding using naturally heat tolerant corals. We are gaining new insights on the physiological and genomic basis for heat tolerance in individual corals, but how can this benefit an entire coral reef ecosystem?
The proposed collaboration with the Climate and Coastal Ecosystem Laboratory (CCEL), University of British Columbia, Canada, will aim to answer this question. CCEL are a group of global climate modelling and coral experts, an area that is lacking from our UK research group. This collaboration will integrate the individual-level scientific knowledge from CORALASSIST into larger spatial population modelling frameworks.
We will use a suite of global climate projections from climate modelling centres across the world (IPCC), combined with historical temperature data and CORALASSIST data, to do 3 main tasks.
1) We will develop a downscaled sea surface temperature (SST) projection for Palau, Micronesia, Pacific Ocean.
2) We will use this SST projection to understand the future trajectory of Palauan coral reefs under different climate scenarios.
3) We will simulate coral restoration efforts in order to provide useful advice to coral reef managers, such as "how soon and how many heat-tolerant corals are needed to benefit coral reef ecosystems in the long-term".
In addition to this, we will conduct 2 short visits to disseminate our research to the wider scientific community, but also to gain valuable ideas from other scientists. The Baum Lab in University of Victoria will give an entire ecosystem view of modelling, whilst the Bay Lab in University of California Davis will provide expert knowledge on integrating genetic data into coral population adaptation models.
Coral reefs face unprecedented declines and ecological changes worldwide due to the impact of humans. This is particularly worrying as coral reefs support fisheries and tourism livelihoods, they act as a coastal protection from storms, and also harbour unique biodiversity. Even when local disturbances like fishing or nutrient enrichment are banned, mass coral bleaching events have still occurred on a global scale. This is caused by severe marine heatwaves. As the oceans heat up due to climate change, marine heatwaves become ever more frequent and last for longer periods. Without action, the socio-ecological services provided by coral reefs may be lost within 3-5 decades due to climate change.
Unfortunately, the global reduction in carbon emissions needed to slow the greenhouse effect and mitigate these ecological impacts is going to be very difficult to achieve under current agreements like the Paris Agreement. Therefore, it is now critical to consider how active management interventions can be used to support the resilience of coral reefs in the future. CORALASSIST, our lab group in Newcastle University, United Kingdom, is working on this topic. We are testing coral restoration techniques combined with selective breeding using naturally heat tolerant corals. We are gaining new insights on the physiological and genomic basis for heat tolerance in individual corals, but how can this benefit an entire coral reef ecosystem?
The proposed collaboration with the Climate and Coastal Ecosystem Laboratory (CCEL), University of British Columbia, Canada, will aim to answer this question. CCEL are a group of global climate modelling and coral experts, an area that is lacking from our UK research group. This collaboration will integrate the individual-level scientific knowledge from CORALASSIST into larger spatial population modelling frameworks.
We will use a suite of global climate projections from climate modelling centres across the world (IPCC), combined with historical temperature data and CORALASSIST data, to do 3 main tasks.
1) We will develop a downscaled sea surface temperature (SST) projection for Palau, Micronesia, Pacific Ocean.
2) We will use this SST projection to understand the future trajectory of Palauan coral reefs under different climate scenarios.
3) We will simulate coral restoration efforts in order to provide useful advice to coral reef managers, such as "how soon and how many heat-tolerant corals are needed to benefit coral reef ecosystems in the long-term".
In addition to this, we will conduct 2 short visits to disseminate our research to the wider scientific community, but also to gain valuable ideas from other scientists. The Baum Lab in University of Victoria will give an entire ecosystem view of modelling, whilst the Bay Lab in University of California Davis will provide expert knowledge on integrating genetic data into coral population adaptation models.
Publications
Lachs L
(2024)
High coral heat tolerance at local-scale thermal refugia
in PLOS Climate
Lachs L
(2023)
Unexpectedly high coral heat tolerance at thermal refugia
Lachs L
(2024)
Author Correction: Emergent increase in coral thermal tolerance reduces mass bleaching under climate change.
in Nature communications
Lachs L
(2023)
Emergent increase in coral thermal tolerance reduces mass bleaching under climate change
in Nature Communications
Lachs L
(2023)
Likely increase in coral thermal tolerance at a Pacific archipelago
in TheScienceBreaker
| Description | Recurrent mass bleaching events threaten the future of coral reefs. To persist under climate change, corals will need to endure progressively more intense and frequent marine heatwaves, yet it remains unknown whether their thermal tolerance can keep pace with warming. Here, we reveal an emergent increase in the thermal tolerance of coral assemblages at a rate of 0.1 °C/decade for a remote Pacific coral reef system. This led to less severe bleaching impacts than would have been predicted otherwise, indicating adaptation, acclimatisation or shifts in community structure. Using future climate projections, we show that if thermal tolerance continues to rise over the coming century at the most-likely historic rate, substantial reductions in bleaching trajectories are possible. High-frequency bleaching can be fully mitigated at some reefs under low-to-middle emissions scenarios, yet can only be delayed under high emissions scenarios. Collectively, our results indicate a potential ecological resilience to climate change, but still highlight the need for reducing carbon emissions in line with Paris Agreement commitments to preserve coral reefs. |
| Exploitation Route | Throughout the coming century, corals will need to survive progressively more intense and frequent temperature events. However, the rate at which coral thermal tolerance can increase naturally in response to climate change has been difficult to ascertain until now. Here, we reveal an emergent, assemblage-level increase in thermal tolerance that occurred over three decades. The upper limits to such rising tolerance will be set, in part, by the underlying biological mechanisms of adaptation and acclimatisation, which remain uncertain. Thus, while we know that tolerance is increasing on decadal time scales, it remains a priority to study the diversity of potential mechanisms driving these trends. While our study demonstrates an innate ecological resilience to climate change, this is insufficient to mitigate severe impacts under middle-to-high emissions scenarios, highlighting the continued need to reduce carbon emissions and to fulfil Paris Agreement commitments. |
| Sectors | Environment |
| URL | https://www.coralassistlab.org/ |
| Description | The work that was conducted and started during has Globalink placement award has led to five scientific papers which are now published led by Liam Lachs, including a lead author paper in Science. This work investigates questions regarding coral bleaching and adaptation potential under climate change, with relevance for novel management strategies for coral reefs, including assisted evolution. The work has also been presented at national (UK) and international (ICRS, Reef Futures) conferences since the end of the formal placement. A novel method of assessing historic changes in coral thermal tolerance has also emerged from this work which has the potential to support future research which could impact climate policies, given updates of future coral bleaching trajectories. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2022 |
| Sector | Environment |
| Impact Types | Policy & public services |
| Description | University of British Columbia |
| Organisation | University of British Columbia |
| Department | Department of Geography |
| Country | Canada |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Research conducted on climate model data and coral bleaching observations |
| Collaborator Contribution | Supervising the research work conducted by Liam Lachs during the internship and on papers after the internship has finished |
| Impact | Two scientific papers in preparation, with one already available as a preprint at https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-1973987/v1 |
| Start Year | 2021 |