[Coral-List] Increasing alkalinity on a reef increases calcification

[Dennis Hubbard]

Hi Peter:

I didn't have a chance to look at the paper in detail, but the crux of the
presentation was that community-level calcification went up significantly
when the pH was changed (by adding NaOH and not taking away CO2). SO, while
this is something (we think) we knew, I thought this was a great way to go
back in time, keeping everything the same axcept ocean chemistry.

I had a nice but short chat with the presenter after what I thought was a
superb talk asking why she (I'd have to go back to the schedule to see if
it was the senior author of the Nature paper) thought that community-scale
calcification went down that much if corals could control pH (and aragonite
saturation state) within their calcification spaces. She commented that the
reef flat was dominated by coralline algae (which don't pump ions to my
knowledge) with many fewer corals So, community structure counts and, as in
the earlier discussion of ENSO, context and language count.

Best,

Denny

On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 4:41 PM, Peter Sale <sale at uwindsor.ca> wrote:

> Doug,
> Thanks for these two links.  However, I thought that the idea that
> calcification rates have already been depressed from preindustrial levels
> was already established, at least for the GBR, by the work of De'ath et al
> (the 2009 Science article) and Silverman et al 2014 in Geochimica and
> Cosmochimica Acta:
> http://journals1.scholarsportal.info/pdf/00167037/v144icomplete/72_cciligbra3p.xml
>
> In other words, your links provide further support, rather than
> establishing something new - or did I completely miss your point (certainly
> possible)?
>
> Peter Sale
>
> web:                      www.petersalebooks.com<
> http://www.petersalebooks.com/>
> Twitter:                @PeterSale3
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Coral-List mailing list
> Coral-List at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
> http://coral.aoml.noaa.gov/mailman/listinfo/coral-list
>



-- 
Dennis Hubbard
Chair, Dept of Geology-Oberlin College Oberlin OH 44074
(440) 775-8346

* "When you get on the wrong train.... every stop is the wrong stop"*
 Benjamin Stein: "*Ludes, A Ballad of the Drug and the Dream*"