Global warming and coral reefs
Abstract
Ever increasing global warming trend is predicted to cause within the next 100 years an accelerated sea level rise, increase in sea surface temparature and enhanced ultraviolet radiation to a significant enough extent to affect drastically the marine communities. Among the latter, the coral reefs are the most vulnerable because of their occurrence near the shoreline and close to the Sea surface, and also because of their sessile nature. Besides, coral reefs respond quantitatively and qualitatively to sea level changes, and the reef structures thus, preserve environmental signatures to reconstruct past sea level changes. This review summarizes the present state of knowledge on inferred Holocene sea level changes and reef structures in the indian seas, and presents predictions of the possible deleterious effects the global warming can have on coral reefs in general, and the Indian reef in particular.
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