LTER: MCR IV: Long-Term Dynamics of a Coral Reef Ecosystem

珊瑚礁为社会提供了重要的利益，从食物到特殊的生物多样性，再到海岸线保护和娱乐，但它们受到自然扰动和人类活动的威胁，包括那些造成全球规模变化的活动。这些压力越来越多地导致珊瑚礁发生大的、往往是突然的生态变化，珊瑚被海藻或其他有害生物所取代。从历史上看，对珊瑚礁造成干扰的主要因素是强风暴，但近几十年来，由于海洋表面沃茨温度持续上升，海洋热浪造成的大规模珊瑚白化事件变得更加频繁和严重。珊瑚礁受到当地人类活动的进一步压力，这些活动造成营养污染，并耗尽控制海藻生长的食草鱼类。研究珊瑚礁在不同程度的营养物污染和捕捞下如何应对这两种干扰，可以提供重要信息，说明是什么影响了珊瑚礁缓冲环境变化和干扰的能力，而不会崩溃到持久的退化状态。莫雷阿珊瑚礁长期生态研究计划（MCR LTER）的基本目标是了解珊瑚礁如何以及为什么随着时间的推移而变化，评估这些变化的后果，并提供维持珊瑚礁生态系统所需的科学知识及其提供的重要社会服务。这项研究提高了对珊瑚礁的认识和管理，使所有关心这一生态、经济和文化重要生态系统福祉的群体受益。 除学术界外，还向有关个人、非政府组织、土著社区和政府实体通报科学成果。这些研究结果也被纳入K-12，本科生，研究生和公共教育活动，通过多管齐下的计划，包括基于探究的课程，互动和基于媒体的公共教育计划，和基于互联网的资源。MCR的研究，培训，教育和推广工作都强调扩大STEM领域的参与和加强STEM扫盲，特别是从海洋科学的边缘化群体。 新的研究活动建立在MCR LTER长期观测和对海洋珊瑚礁的广泛生态理解的强大基础上，以解决以下核心问题：不断变化的干扰机制（除了气旋风暴外，经常性的热浪）如何改变珊瑚礁的恢复力，以及改变恢复力的生态后果是什么？研究活动是围绕一个统一的框架组织的，该框架明确阐述了珊瑚礁群落如何受到珊瑚灭绝干扰的性质和历史的影响，以及这些对干扰的反应如何受到当地人类压力因素模式的影响。新的研究回答了三个焦点问题：（1）不同的干扰类型，无论是删除（风暴）或保留（热浪）死珊瑚骨骼，如何影响群落动态，生态状态的突然变化，和恢复力？(2)当地的压力如何与新的干扰机制相互作用，以创造空间异质性的社区动态，生态系统过程和空间弹性？以及（3）珊瑚和珊瑚礁群落的哪些属性影响它们在当前和未来环境条件下保持复原力的能力？这些问题提供了一个无与伦比的机会来测试假设和推进理论，关于生态恢复力和突然生态变化的原因和后果，这是广泛相关的水生和陆地生态系统。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得支持的评估使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准。

Coral reefs provide important benefits to society, from food to exceptional biodiversity to shoreline protection and recreation, but they are threatened by natural perturbations and human activities, including those causing global-scale changes. These pressures increasingly are causing coral reefs to undergo large, often abrupt, ecological changes where corals are being replaced by seaweeds or other undesirable organisms. Historically, the major agent of disturbance to coral reefs has been powerful storms, but in recent decades, episodes of mass coral bleaching from marine heat waves have become more frequent and severe as the temperature of ocean surface waters continues to rise. Coral reefs are further stressed by local human activities that cause nutrient pollution and deplete herbivorous fishes that control growth of seaweeds. Studying how coral reefs respond to these two types of disturbance under different levels of nutrient pollution and fishing provides essential information on what affects the ability of coral reefs to buffer environmental change and disturbances without collapsing to a persistent, degraded condition. The fundamental goals of the Moorea Coral Reef Long Term Ecological Research program (MCR LTER) are to understand how and why coral reefs change over time, to assess the consequences of these changes, and to contribute scientific knowledge needed to sustain coral reef ecosystems and the important societal services they provide. This research improves understanding and management of coral reefs, which benefits all groups concerned with the welfare of this ecologically, economically and culturally important ecosystem. In addition to academic communities, scientific findings are communicated to interested individuals, non-governmental organizations, indigenous communities and governmental entities. These findings also are integrated into K-12, undergraduate, graduate and public education activities through a multi-pronged program that includes inquiry-based curricula, interactive and media-based public education programs, and internet-based resources. MCR’s research, training, education and outreach efforts all emphasize broadening participation in STEM fields and strengthening STEM literacy, particularly from marginalized groups in marine science. New research activities build on MCR LTER’s powerful foundation of long-term observations and broad ecological understanding of oceanic coral reefs to address the following core issues: How is the changing disturbance regime (recurrent heat waves in addition to cyclonic storms) altering the resilience of coral reefs, and what are the ecological consequences of altered resilience? Research activities are organized around a unifying framework that explicitly addresses how reef communities are affected by the nature and history of coral-killing disturbances, and how those responses to disturbance are influenced by the pattern of local human stressors. New studies answer three focal questions: (1) How do different disturbance types, which either remove (storms) or retain (heat waves) dead coral skeletons, affect community dynamics, abrupt changes in ecological state, and resilience? (2) How do local stressors interact with new disturbance regimes to create spatial heterogeneity in community dynamics, ecosystem processes, and spatial resilience? And (3) What attributes of coral and coral reef communities influence their capacity to remain resilient under current and future environmental conditions? These questions provide an unparalleled opportunity to test hypotheses and advance theory regarding ecological resilience and the causes and consequences of abrupt ecological change, which is broadly relevant across aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.