Coral Reef Resilience in Taiwan: Lessons from Long-Term Ecological Research on the Coral Reefs of Kenting National Park (Taiwan)

作者：Shashank Keshavmurthy, Chao‐Yang Kuo, Ya‐Yi Huang, Rodrigo Carballo-Bolaños, Pei-Jei Meng, Jih‐Terng Wang, Chaolun Allen Chen · 发表于：Journal of Marine Science and Engineering · 年份：2019 · DOI：10.3390/jmse7110388 · 被引用次数：44 · 研究领域：Coral and Marine Ecosystems Studies、Marine and coastal plant biology、Coastal wetland ecosystem dynamics

Coral reefs in the Anthropocene are being subjected to unprecedented levels of stressors, including local disturbances—such as overfishing, habitat destruction, and pollution—and large-scale destruction related to the global impacts of climate change—such as typhoons and coral bleaching. Thus, the future of corals and coral reefs in any given community and coral-Symbiodiniaceae associations over time will depend on their level of resilience, from individual corals to entire ecosystems. Herein we review the environmental settings and long-term ecological research on coral reefs, based on both coral resilience and space, in Kenting National Park (KNP), Hengchun Peninsula, southern Taiwan, wherein fringing reefs have developed along the coast of both capes and a semi-closed bay, known as Nanwan, within the peninsula. These reefs are influenced by a branch of Kuroshio Current, the monsoon-induced South China Sea Surface Current, and a tide-induced upwelling that not only shapes coral communities, but also reduces the seawater temperature and creates fluctuating thermal environments which over time have favoured thermal-resistant corals, particularly those corals close to the thermal effluent of a nuclear power plant in the west Nanwan. Although living coral cover (LCC) has fluctuated through time in concordance with major typhoons and coral bleaching between 1986 and 2019, spatial heterogeneity in LCC recovery has been detected, suggesting that coral reef resilience is variable a...