Reefs as Source or Sink of CO2

[Kayanne]

Dear coral-list participants, 

Thank you for the recent information exchange on our paper "Diurnal changes 
in the partial pressure of carbon dioxide in coral reef water" in Science, 
269, 214-216 (1995). 

As Dr. Jean-Pierre Gattuso showed, we have received two comments from Dr. 
Gattuso et al. and Prof. Buddemeier and I responded to them.  Their 
principal criticisms are that our examples are too small 
(representativeness of our study site and statistical poverty etc.) to 
contradict the current idea that reef calcium carbonate production exceeds 
net photosynthetic production and act as a sources of CO2. 

In my response to their comments, I stressed that our basic question is to 
the idea of a closed reef originated from Odum in 1950's that reef net 
primary production is zero, because reefs are surrounded by tropical 
oligotrophic water.  We wish that the discussion of the relation between 
reefs and CO2 will not remain in sink/source controversy but is sublated to 
create new viewpoint on coral reefs. 

This March, we will hold an "International Workshop on Response of Coral 
Reefs to Global Changes" in Tsukuba, Japan. One of the topics in it is to 
extend the idea of open reefs both to the outer ocean and  to the 
atmosphere in relation not only to carbon but also to nitrogen and 
phosphate.  Basically this workshop is composed of the presentations only 
by invited speakers and is not a open symposium.  We would like to discuss 
the issues from interdisciplinary points of views and both from longer and 
shorter timescales and hope to create a new research program on reefs and 
global changes.   

Hajime Kayanne 
Univ. Tokyo 
------------------------ 
Sorry if you feel my response is delayed. 
I am now crazy busy in WS prep, univ works etc. 
I cut off sleeping time to respond to you ! 
Hajime KAYANNE 
Dept. Geography, Univ. Tokyo 
Tel: +81-3-3812-2111 (ex4573) 
Fax: +81-3-5684-0518