Impact details: loss of biodiversity

impact chain for tropical coastal areas / acidification (click nodes to view details):
selected case study results:
Case study reference
Spatial context
Impact description (case study)
Case study recommendations
Lundquist, C. J., Ramsay, D., Bell, R., Swales, A., & Kerr, S. (2011). Predicted impacts of climate change on New Zealand's biodiversity. Pacific Conservation Biology, 17(3), 179. Global Ocean acidification is expected to cause declines in carbonate communities due to decreases in carbonate availability, reductions in the creation of carbonate structures, their structural stability, and larvae survival and growth. Cold water communities are predicted to decline first due to a lower aragonite saturation horizon in cold waters. -
Kleypas, J. A., & Yates, K. K. (2009). Coral reefs and ocean acidification. Oceanography, 22(4), 108-117. Global The decline in calcium carbonate production, coupled with an increase in calcium carbonate dissolution, will diminish reef building and the benefits that reefs provide, such as high structural complexity that supports biodiversity on reefs, and breakwater effects that protect shorelines and create quiet habitats for other ecosystems, such as mangroves and seagrass beds. These changes can degrade the reef 's resilience (i.e., its ability to withstand disturbance) even while it appears visibly healthy, until at some point it can no longer sustain even minor disturbances, and becomes vulnerable to an ecological "regime shift", that is, a rapid transition to a different ecosystem state. As ocean acidification proceeds, more and more species will be affected. Some species will be losers (e.g., corals) and some will be winners (e.g., seagrasses), but the higher the proportion of species that are affected (including winners and losers), the higher the probability that some major function of the ecosystem (e.g., reef building, grazing, filter feeding, sediment turnover) will collapse, leading to a regime shift. -
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