Like all good things, Dr. John Bruno's Reef Science Corner series must too come to an end. Yet, he leaves on a positive note, much like most of the marine biologists, conservationists, and scientists we've encountered thus far and this makes the true difference in marine conservation.
To understand the impact of this series to The Reef Tank, please take a look at my summation and thanks to Dr. Bruno on his blog, Climate Shifts. You can find that guest post here.
And now without further adieu...John's optimistic conclusion.
Despite the documented and projected impacts of climate change on coral reefs, there is reason to be optimistic. First, it is possible that corals will acclimate or evolve to become more tolerant of rising temperature and able to calcify in more acidic conditions. There is some evidence that this has happened to some degree. Although, given the unprecedented rate of climate change and the suite of changes and stresses corals would have to adapt to, many coral biologists are skeptical that adaptation and acclimation alone will facilitate long-term survival if climate-related threats are not reduced.
We are also learning that reefs are still somewhat resilient and under some conditions have the ability to recover from major impacts fairly quickly. Reefs devastated by bleaching in 1998 in many countries in the Indian, Pacific and Caribbean oceans are rapidly recovering. Even some reefs that were highly degraded by multiple disturbances have shown signs of recovery. (see recent blog posts about examples of rapid reef recovery here and here) In fact, despite the general regional and global downward trends, coral cover increased on nearly half of the world’s reefs over the last decade. This suggests that we are not too from reaching a large-scale dynamic equilibrium. In fact, coral cover in some regions such as the Great Barrier Reef has been more or less static for the last 10-20 years. Perhaps, by reducing some local stressors and curbing climate change, the current equilibrium state of reefs can be maintained or possibly moved to a higher point. Of course this assumes that the frequency, scale and magnitude of impacts don’t increase, which given the best available climate forecasts seems unlikely.
Dr. John Bruno is a marine ecologist and conservation biologist. He's also an associate professor in the Department of Marine Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill . His research is focused on understanding and conserving the structure and dynamics of marine communities. Dr. Bruno works in a variety of marine habitats including coral reefs, coastal wetland and sand dune plant communities, oyster reefs and seagrass beds. Read more of his work on The Climate Shifts blog, and check out the Bruno lab home page.
Like all good things, Dr. John Bruno's Reef Science Corner series must too come to an end. Yet, he leaves on a positive note, much like most of the marine biologists, conservationists, and scientists we've encountered thus far and this makes the true difference in marine conservation. 
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