Manzello, D. P., Rule, E.

The Science Behind Coral Bleaching in the Florida Keys

2014

"AOML's front-page web feature on coral bleaching in the Florida Keys. AOML coral ecologists provide insight as to how the environmental conditions they are tracking indicate that a mass bleaching event is possible and even likely in the Florida Keys. Using long-term in situ datasets, such as the Coastal-Marine Automated Network (C-MAN) stations in the Florida Keys, AOML scientists identified specific patterns of warm waters on coral reefs that tend to precede bleaching events. The indices that proved to be the most reliable indicators for bleaching for the Florida Reef Tract are maximum monthly sea surface temperature and the number of day greater that 30.5 C (86.9 F)."

National Coral Reef Monitoring Plan (NCRMP); climatic monitoring

FY2014 CRCP Project ID 743; Project Title: National Coral Reef Monitoring Plan (NCRMP) Implementation (Climatic Monitoring); Principal Investigator: Jessica Morgan