The 27–year decline of coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef and its causes

By G. De’ath, Katharina E. Fabricius, H. Sweatman, Marji Puotinen. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2012

1,783 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Ecology, Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a849939bfc275ab813eb26a895c0cb621ced2b43

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Ecology

1. M. Pratchett
2. S. Wilson
3. Maria Byrne
4. A. Hoey
5. A. Negri
6. Peter J. Mumby
7. H. Sweatman
8. V. Messmer

In Global and Planetary Change

1. M. Pratchett
2. S. Wilson
3. Maria Byrne
4. A. Hoey
5. Peter J. Mumby
6. A. Negri
7. H. Sweatman
8. V. Messmer

Citations in the corpus

• Harnessing ecological processes to facilitate coral restoration (2018, neutral): “Before the mass bleaching of 2014–2016 (Hughes et al. 2017), over 40% of the coral cover lost on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef over the past three decades was due to outbreaks of the corallivorous crown-of-thorns sea star ( Acanthaster planci ; De’ath et al. 2012).”
• Upside-Down but Headed in the Right Direction: Review of the Highly Versatile Cassiopea xamachana System (2018, background): “Environmental Monitoring and Ecotoxicology As marine systems worldwide continue to decline from local and global physical, chemical, and biological threats (De’ath et al., 2012; Epstein et al., 2016), the need to manage marine natural resources and reduce these threats is becoming increasingly more ”
• Remote Sensing of Coral Reefs for Monitoring and Management: A Review (2016, background): “Even the most comprehensive and well-conducted survey programs, such as that of the Australian Institute of Marine Science Long-Term Monitoring Program [24] struggle with the challenge that, for example, only a tiny fractional percentage of the 344,000 square kilometre area of the Great Barrier Reef”
• Climate change impacts in Latin America and the Caribbean and their implications for development (2017, background): “Coral bleaching events on a large scale have been linked to unusually high sea-surface temperatures but also pollution, overfishing and the related shift in species composition are important factors (De’ath et al. 2012).”
• Connectivity networks reveal the risks of crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks on the Great Barrier Reef (2014, background): “While high levels of COTS have likely occurred throughout the evolutionary history of the GBR, a combination of anthropogenic influences and climatic events are thought to make the impacts of COTS outbreaks more severe (Brodie et al. 2005; Fabricius, Okaji & De’ath 2010; De’ath et al. 2012), althoug”
• Thirty Years of Research on Crown-of-Thorns Starfish (1986–2016): Scientific Advances and Emerging Opportunities (2017, background): “are one of the principle causes of major coral loss (along with severe tropical storms and mass coral bleaching) that are amenable to intervention (De’ath et al. 2012).”
• A global map of human pressures on tropical coral reefs (2021, background): “Lestari, personal communication) or biological invasions by crown of thorn starfish (De’ath et al., 2012).”
• Mangrove lagoons of the Great Barrier Reef support coral populations persisting under extreme environmental conditions (2019, background): “Progressive decline of coral cover throughout the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) since at least the 1980s (Sweatman et al. 2011, De’ath et al. 2012) has now been superseded by catastrophic coral mortality in just 2 yr, from the worst-ever recorded mass coral bleaching (>30%, 2016−2017; Hughes et al.…”
• Reef degradation and the loss of critical ecosystem goods and services provided by coral reef fishes (2014, background): “Further declines in the abundance of corals (especially Acropora) will, therefore, greatly constrain abundance of many different reef fishes, especially if coral cover continues to decline below 10–20% [3].”
• Evolving coral reef conservation with genetic information (2014, background): “…common interventions focus on reducing the compounding stresses to the ecosystem, such as closing an area to fishing to enhance population recovery and maintain healthy source populations or reducing non-point source pollution causing nutrient enrichment (McLeod et al. 2009, De’ath et al. 2012).”
• Temporal changes in benthic assemblages on Florida Keys reefs 11 years after the 1997/1998 El Niño (2013, background): “The cumulative effect of these stressors has been a worldwide degradation of coral reefs, with some reported to have lost more than half their scleractinian cover (Gardner et al. 2003, De’ath et al. 2012).”
• Sexual production of corals for reef restoration in the Anthropocene (2020, background): “Up to half of the world’s tropical corals have been lost in the last 50 yr (Pandolfi et al. 2003, Wilkinson 2008, Burke et al. 2011, De’ath et al. 2012, Hughes et al. 2017, 2018), and over one-third of scleractinian co - ral species are now at increased risk of extinction (Car penter et al. 2008).”
• Nearshore Turbid-Zone Corals Exhibit High Bleaching Tolerance on the Great Barrier Reef Following the 2016 Ocean Warming Event (2017, background): “These surveys revealed thriving coral communities that have displayed a remarkable resilience to the major factors which have contributed to the degradation of clear-water reefs further offshore (e.g., declining water quality, cyclone impacts, crown-of-thorns sea stars; De’ath et al., 2012).”