What Are The Six Abiotic Factors That Affect Coral Reefs

The Great Barrier Reef is one of the seven wonders around the world. It is approximately 344,400 kilometers long. The Great Barrier Reef is home to many marine organisms. More than 1,500 species of fish live in the Great Barrier Reef. The coral that forms The Great Barrier Reef is made of polyps. Billions of living coral polyps are attached to the reef. The colour of these polyps range from blue, green, purple, red and yellow. As the largest living structure on the planet, the Great Barrier Reef is incredibly plentiful and various. Stretching 2300 kilometers, this natural icon is so large it can even be seen from outer space. While it’s known mostly for its large maze of colorful reefs, its intricate architecture also provides a home for a huge number of plants and creatures. There are multiple reasons as why the Great Barrier Reef is important, as it helps protect coastlines from the detrimental effects of waves and storms, provides habitats and protection for many marine organisms, help in nutrient recycling and is the source of nitrogen and other essential foods for marine food chains.

Corals build colonies that secrete calcium carbonate to form ocean reefs. When they're healthy, coral reefs provide shelter and food for animals all along the food chain, including the top: us. Across the planet, half a billion people rely, directly and indirectly, on corals for their living. That's why what happens to the 9,000-year-old Great Barrier Reef, as well as to other reefs worldwide, is critical. The floods in Queensland have hurt the Great Barrier Reef by funnelling into the ocean vast plumes of freshwater and agricultural runoff that could severely damage the coral. Besides the extreme rain that sparked the floods, rising ocean temperatures, changes to the ocean's chemistry and the global trade in natural resources — all symptoms of our fossil-fuel economy — are waging a multiform war on the marine

The Great Barrier Reef includes the world’s biggest coral reef ecosystem and the biggest living structure on the earth. Over 600 types of soft and hard corals exist in the Great Barrier Reef. It extends from Queensland to Bundaberg. The reef extends over 14 degrees of latitude. Fun fact: the Great Barrier Reef can be seen from outer space.

Coral reefs are the most biodiverse ecosystem on the planet. There are more than 25,000 known species of organisms and countless others that have yet to be identified (Helvarg, 2000). Reefs thrive on the shallow edge of tropical seas, most often on the eastern edge of continents along warm water currents that brush the coasts. Reefs cannot live in cold waters and are limited by ocean depth and available sunlight. Coral is the foundation of the reef community, providing a three-dimensional structure where thousands of species of vertebrates and invertebrates live and feed. Some species of coral are hard, while others soft. Some are branched, yet others are compact and rounded. Coral is made up of large

The Great Barrier Reef is the world’s largest coral reef system. It is located in Queensland and stretches 2,300 km along the coast, covering 348,000 km2. The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority was established in 1975 in order to sustainably manage the natural heritage for future generations.

The temperature of coral reefs can differ from 77 degrees and 84 degrees fahrenheit. But can range from the location of the reefs. But reefs are mostly located in warmer spots of the earth because they need more sunlight to maintain energy, and go through photosynthesis. Sunlight is also another abiotic factor of a coral reef. Since coral reefs are living, they need sunlight for energy and to go through the process of photosynthesis. The salinity is the amount of salt in an area of the coral reef, and is measured by ppt (parts per thousand). Coral reefs are usually shallow in the water, because they need to be closer to the sunlight, so the depth of the reef is another abiotic factor. Waves allow wastes to be washed away and brings food to the reef area. The waves are controlled by the moon and is called El

The Great Barrier Reef generally has two main weather time frames. Winter period in which temperature is generally warm with low rainfall and the summer period with pleasant weather and higher levels of rainfall.

has risen to around 3.2 millimetres per year, although it does vary from year to

Floras and microbes are additional main biotic mechanisms of many oceanic ecosystems. Microbes act as decomposers for oceanic ecosystems, and they break defunct living matter and transforms it into vitality that is used by other existing organisms in the oceanic ecosystem. Detrivores, which are a type of animal, also eat deceased or putrefying plants and animal matter. Algae, which are autotrophs, appear as the head herbal vivacity and primary producers in oceanic ecosystems. The sunlight transforms the light into energy for nourishment for marine plants. Heat and light are focal abiotic factors discovered in essentially all oceanic ecosystems, consequently oceanic ecosystems has some broaden abiotic mechanisms, comprising viscosity and many more. The power that the bulk of an organism is called buoyancy. The durability of the drive of seawater is called viscosity. These abiotic factors source to the drive of all organisms in oceanic systems. Sunlight pierces the sea exterior only about 65 feet. As there is more salt in the Great Barrier Reef than in other oceanic ecosystems the marine holds less oxygen than the

The Great Barrier Reef is a huge, complex ecosystem located off the east coast of northern Queensland and is considered as an ecosystem at risk. It stretches approximately 2300km from Papua New Guinea’s Fly River in the north (8⁰S) to Fraser Island in the south (24⁰S) and has become the largest World Heritage site in the world. It has 1500 of the worlds 13 000 fish species in it area, 200 bird species, 5oo species of seaweed, 600 species of echinoderm, 125 species of shark and ray and around 360 species of hard coral.

These increasing ocean temperatures, which result in global warming, are mostly due to the amount of CO2 released in the air, therefore threatening the existence of the coral reef systems (Cole, Pratchett and Jones). The reduction of the coral reef ecosystems are attributed to the climate induced bleaching from the past decade. The loss of coral reef environments has direct affects to the habitat of an organism within the reefs (Cole, Pratchett and Jones), leading to a decrease in biodiversity (Coker, Pratchett and Munday).

According to the latest research of scientist team led by the University of New South Wales (UNSW), tropical corals cannot survive without the Symbiodinium algae that live inside them. These photosynthetic organisms supply the corals with all their food, more than 90 percent. UNSW specialists say that increased water temperatures stress the algae, provoking them to produce an excess of toxic substances, which called reactive oxygen species. As a result of intoxication, damage both the algae and the corals.

Coral reefs around the world are in danger. One of the causes is global warming, which has been increasing the temperature of the ocean water resulting in coral bleaching. This essay will focus on damage occurring to the Great Barrier Reef.

The Great Barrier Reef is a reef located in the Coral Sea, on Australia’s north-eastern coast. It stretches more than 2,300km along the state of Queensland’s coastline, beginning at the tip of Cape York Peninsula in the north and extending down to Bundaberg in the south.

      Coral reefs are continuously being both built up and decomposed, so different parts of a reef are in varying stages of succession (Richmond, 1993). Coral reefs are very fragile, because reef-building organisms cannot thrive if the surrounding water changes significantly. Coral reefs require very specific conditions in order to grow: a solid structure for the base; warm and consistent water temperatures (averaging between 20 and 30 degrees Celsius); stable salinity; moderate wave action; and clear water that is low in nutrients and plankton. The water on a healthy coral reef is clear because there are very few nutrients, so plankton that would cloud the water are few. In general corals grow slowly, but they are extremely efficient at living and reproducing in these conditions (American Zoologist, pg 524-536).