Search for: All records

Mytilus edulisis a commercially and ecologically important species found along the east coast of the United States. Ecologically,M.edulisimproves water quality through filtration feeding and provides habitat formation and coastal protection through reef formation. Like many marine calcifiers, ocean warming, and acidification are a growing threat to these organisms—impacting their morphology and function. Museum collections are useful in assessing long-term environmental impacts on organisms in a natural multi-stressor environment, where acclimation and adaptation can be considered. Using the American Museum of Natural History collections ranging from the early 1900s until now, we show that shell porosity changes through time. Shells collected today are significantly more porous than shells collected in the 1960s and, at some sites, than shells collected from the early 1900s. The disparity between porosity changes matches well with the warming that occurred over the last 130 years in the north Atlantic suggesting that warming is causing porosity changes. However, more work is required to discern local environmental impacts and to fully identify porosity drivers. Since, porosity is known to affect structural integrity, porosity increasing through time could have negative consequences for mussel reef structural integrity and hence habitat formation and storm defenses. 

Abstract. The response of the hydrological cycle to anthropogenic climatechange, especially across the tropical oceans, remains poorly understood due to the scarcity of long instrumental temperature and hydrological records. Massive shallow-water corals are ideally suited to reconstructing past oceanic variability as they are widely distributed across the tropics,rapidly deposit calcium carbonate skeletons that continuously record ambient environmental conditions, and can be sampled at monthly to annualresolution. Climate reconstructions based on corals primarily use the stable oxygen isotope composition (δ18O), which acts as a proxy for sea surface temperature (SST), and the oxygen isotope composition ofseawater (δ18Osw), a measure of hydrological variability. Increasingly, coral δ18O time series are paired with time series of strontium-to-calcium ratios (Sr/Ca), a proxy for SST, from the same coral to quantify temperature and δ18Osw variabilitythrough time. To increase the utility of such reconstructions, we presentthe CoralHydro2k database, a compilation of published, peer-reviewed coral Sr/Ca and δ18O records from the Common Era (CE). The database contains 54 paired Sr/Ca–δ18O records and 125 unpaired Sr/Ca or δ18O records, with 88 % of these records providing data coverage from 1800 CE to the present. A quality-controlled set of metadata with standardized vocabulary and units accompanies each record, informing the useof the database. The CoralHydro2k database tracks large-scale temperatureand hydrological variability. As such, it is well-suited for investigationsof past climate variability, comparisons with climate model simulationsincluding isotope-enabled models, and application in paleodata-assimilation projects. The CoralHydro2k database is available in Linked Paleo Data (LiPD) format with serializations in MATLAB, R, and Python and can be downloaded from the NOAA National Center for Environmental Information's Paleoclimate Data Archive at https://doi.org/10.25921/yp94-v135 (Walter et al., 2022). 

Abstract Massive, long‐livedSiderastreaandDiploriacorals are species commonly used for sea surface temperature (SST) reconstructions in the North Atlantic. However, they are rarely found to exceed 200 years in age. Thus, it is imperative to continuously develop alternative taxa for paleoreconstructions.Colpophyllia natans, a highly populous tropical North Atlantic coral, are known to grow large colonies, potentially containing environmental records spanning several hundreds of years. However, its low density and complicated architecture poses a challenge in extracting climate signals from this coral. This study presents the first monthly‐resolved climate calibration ofColpophyllia natansand validates its utility as a new paleoarchive, relative toSiderastrea siderea.Linear regressions of monthly and interannual coral Sr/Ca with instrumental SST reveal robust, significant relationships (p < 0.05), indicating that microsampling along a single thecal wall ofC. natansallowed for robust climate reconstructions. Additionally, both corals capture similar SST variations (t‐test,p ≥ 0.05), which allowed for the generation of a single, composite interspecies SST record that correlates with instrumental SST even more strongly (p < 0.0001) than the individual corals. Mean annual and boreal summer interspecies SST correlate significantly with North Atlantic SST indices (p < 0.05), demonstrating the ability to capture regional, long‐term SST trends in the North Atlantic. Spatial correlation maps of boreal winter interspecies SST to instrumental SST and geopotential height anomalies reveal coherent spatial patterns linked to the North Atlantic Oscillation. Our findings suggest thatColpophyllia natanshas enormous potential as a new paleoclimate archive for reconstructing temporal and spatial SST variability in the tropical Atlantic.