#4 Coral Conservation & Fending Off Flooding
Photo by Francesco Ungaro from Pexels
Morning Jo(k)e
If you think about it, conservatives are just trying to lower living costs for the average citizen. I mean, by ignoring global warming, think of how much money everyone will save on their winter heating bills.
Greening Pastures
As you may have heard from that one teenager who made marine biology their entire personality for a few months, coral reefs are disappearing across the globe at an alarming rate. From the Kingman Reef in Hawaii to the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, even the world’s most robust and expansive coral reefs are rapidly declining due to a myriad of factors including disease, ocean acidification, global warming, and even... sunscreen? (It may protect YOU, Martha, but think of the corals!) These have led to a massive wave, pun intended, of coral bleaching and subsequent death with an estimated 70-90% of all existing coral reefs expected to disappear by 2040, according to a group of scientists from University of Hawaii Manoa at the 2020 Ocean Sciences Meeting.
Coral bleaching is a process wherein corals expel the tiny algae which live inside them in response to stress caused by environmental changes like increasing temperatures. Basically, think of corals as a manic landlord who throws out its tenants when things start to look less than ideal (throwback to the pandemic, am I right?). This leaves the coral pale, turning the once vibrant ecosystem reminiscent of The Little Mermaid into an underwater version of The Lion King’s elephant graveyard.
However, bleached corals are not dead… immediately. Instead, they live in a constant state of starvation and are extremely vulnerable to disease. While it is technically possible that bleached coral may recover, it’s rare for a bleached reef to come back.
More than a beautiful sight that is valuable in and of itself, coral reefs are one of the oldest and richest ecosystems in the world, covering about a tenth of a percent of the ocean. Reefs support hundreds of thousands of animal and plant species (about 25% of all marine species) with some reefs having been found to possess fossils dating as far back as 500 million years. Gee, isn’t science grand?
If you need even more reason to care, the disappearance of reefs has very real and very detrimental effects on humans that may impact more than just your snorkeling hobby. Reefs are natural barriers against storms and waves which keep coastal communities safe. That means less protection from the increasing frequency of natural disasters and storms due to climate change. Additionally, almost a billion people rely on reefs as a food source, thus creating a serious threat to many people’s security and wellbeing.
However, coral reefs have recently been found thriving in rather unusual places such as the Tarawa atoll of Kiribati, the Verde Island Passage in the Philippines, and the Kimberley Coral Reefs in northwestern Australia. All of these locations have a common thread of robust coral species which can thrive under the harsh conditions of acidic and/or high temperature waters. In 2018, scientists at the University of Hawaii created a framework for identifying reefs surviving against degradation, but a recent study took it one step further to understand the mechanisms behind why certain corals are surviving while others are dying out.
Within the Port of Miami, Florida, a community of healthy brain corals were studied to understand why this community was thriving when nearby offshore reefs had been desecrated. Even more intriguing, the water in the port is extremely low-quality due to dense boat traffic, frequent freshwater input, high nutrient content, low oxygen levels, and high acidity (“Life finds a way” *Jurassic Park music plays*). Since they first started monitoring the corals in 2017, the “urban” corals, as they deemed the community in the Port of Miami, has not experienced any bleaching or disease issues.
Photo of brain coral by Daniel Öberg on Unsplash
This study compared the brain corals within the urban environment to the communities offshore and found three major differences:
The urban corals had a higher ability to sense and detect food particles as well as pathogens
They were better able to create their own food and digest pathogens
They had a higher innate immunity to protect against pathogens and water pollution
Additionally, the urban corals hosted symbiotic organisms (organisms that help the corals) which were more heat-tolerant than those in the offshore communities.
These findings are extremely important in understanding why certain corals are able to survive inhospitable environments and may lead to conservation efforts that could help save reefs that are not as well adapted.
Speaking (writing?) of conservation efforts, there is growing evidence to support an opinion that strict protection of ecosystems, in this case corals, might cause them to be more fragile. In the case of the Tarawa study on two nearby coral reefs, the scientists showed that the reef experiencing local stressors (in this case, increased heat stress) was more resistant to stressors brought on by climate change. Using the old “survival of the fittest” viewpoint, the reefs with local stressors force the more adapted species to survive while the others die off. By strictly protecting reefs, this may actually allow sensitive species to thrive, creating a more vulnerable population.
However, protected reefs are better at something compared to those with local stressors. While reefs with protections become more susceptible to stressors, they are better able to recover afterwards. In fact, resistance to stressors seems to be a tradeoff from recovering from stressors.
Both aspects are potentially valuable in maintaining coral reefs, but a recent study has argued resistance is more important than recovery because there may eventually be no opportunity to recover given the global increase in ocean temperatures and acidification. In other words, they argue resilience is a proactive™ (sponsor me), long-term solution whereas recovery only helps in the short-term.
Rather than using this evidence to completely change conservation, scientists are suggesting to use this to inform maintenance practices and spur future research. In the face of rapidly declining coral reefs and the danger that brings, this research provides a glint of hope for the future survival of coral ecosystems.
Budding Hope
As I have previously talked about, green spaces have massive health benefits for people living in urban environments. However, when green spaces are strategically planned in a network to create green infrastructure (green roofs, street trees, rain gardens, landscape patches, etc.), the benefits surpass much more than mental and physical health on an individual level.
The services green infrastructure provides include the first of mind benefits like improving air quality, but on the large scale of city-wide implementation, the impacts can be massive enough to impact seemingly immobile factors like the temperature. Urban environments tend to be warmer than their rural counterparts, a factor which can negatively affect people’s health and safety, so using green infrastructure to cool the air temperature can be very beneficial to the health of a city’s citizens. Think of green infrastructure as a metaphorical palm leaf, fanning the city to keep its citizens cool, except there’s nobody serving grapes. From an energy use standpoint, this can also decrease air conditioning usage during warmer months, saving the citizens money and decreasing their carbon footprint.
More than this, though, green infrastructure also provides another major service to urban areas: storm-water runoff and flood mitigation. Typically 75-95% of urban areas are impervious (rain can’t go through roads, sidewalks, buildings, etc.). Therefore, urban water management systems are constantly being tested in their effectiveness to stave off flash flooding. However, many fail to do so successfully, leading to safety concerns, pollution, damage to buildings, and the list goes on and on. Basically, it’s bad. Like, really bad. Just look up a video of New York City’s subway systems during a storm to understand the danger flooding presents.
Further, a 2009 study found that total flood losses from 1970 to 2006 reached $140 billion in 31 European countries ($3.8 billion annually), so not only is the physical damage from flooding extremely high, the monetary value is as well.
Fortunately, green infrastructure can greatly reduce flood risks by acting as a buffer to stormwater systems. Essentially, instead of water running into the sewer or piling up in the streets, the rain gets absorbed by vegetation and soaks into the ground.
This has had an incredible impact on cities being able to reduce flooding since green infrastructure was first adopted in the 1990’s. However, with climate change creating more extreme weather events and global urbanization increasing and creating denser cities, flood mitigation is becoming an even more pressing issue.
Luckily, some people are actually trying to create solutions (shoutout to the Green New Deal which still hasn’t been taken seriously!). A 2020 study has developed a method to identify priority areas within urban cities for implementing green infrastructure (figure out which areas need to be helped the most). The method utilizes mapping technology to identify priority areas based on five criteria:
Storm-water runoff mitigation
Protecting vulnerable groups
Protecting flood-sensitive roads
Protecting flood-sensitive buildings
Reducing environmental injustice
Not only does this method identify flood-prone areas, it takes a wholly sustainable approach to include both financial (protecting roads/buildings) and societal (vulnerable/ disenfranchised groups) concerns as well. This is incredibly important to secure the safety and wellbeing of all communities within a city, especially those who tend to face more environmental and societal injustices while also minimizing the physical damage to urban structures. Let’s not forget that taxes pay for those repairs, IF they get repaired.
This approach provides urban planners and administrators another tool to alleviate flooding risks by being able to locate and implement green infrastructure in a more strategic and intentional way. As many cities continue to face worsening storms due to climate change, innovative and inclusive tools like this will be vital for cities to keep their citizens safe.
Feeling Inspired?
Wow, weren’t those stories incredibly inspiring and make you want to take action in your own life? Well, do I have great news for you! You can! All you have to do is eat vegan one dinner a week this month. Yes, dinner. I know, I know it sounds difficult and potentially gross for some of you, because “ew, vegetables!” However, I promise you it’s much easier than you think. For instance, here are some really simple ways to make a delicious vegan dinner:
Literally just don’t eat meat/dairy
When you go grocery shopping, spend an extra $1.50 and get the vegan alternative
Start with a cuisine that is easily made vegan: Mexican, Italian, Indian, Thai
Don’t go into it with a “but vegan food is gross!” attitude
Penniless Thoughts
“To be or not to be” has never been a question which I’ve asked myself. If I’m being honest, I don’t even know what it means. And please, god, nobody explain it to me. I don’t care.
However, what I almost care about is that people seem to really love the phrase. Was that a previous generation’s “YOLO”? I’m sure some white guy said it, so it had to have been canon at the time. I also don’t really know what “canon” means either. Apparently neither does anybody else by the dozens of different ways I’ve heard people use it, but that hasn’t ever really stopped people before, now has it?
Wow, I’m really being vulnerable today. You all should feel so lucky. You could’ve just gotten another Housewives recap!
Doesn’t that to be or not to be phrase/question also remind you of that guy, who I’m pretty sure was a U.S. president, that said that one quote about fear? It was something like “we can only fear fear itself”, which my sixth grade English teacher would’ve had an absolute conniption over had I been the one to originate the phrase in her class (which I could totally have done, given the opportunity that is). Using the same word twice up against each other? Not on Mrs. Welch’s watch. She also yelled at me for writing with my pencil too loudly one time, so maybe that’s just telling of who she was (is?) as a person.
I wonder if those two people who became famous for saying one single sentence were the same person. Again, please, nobody tell me. I could’ve literally googled all of this, but I decided it wasn’t worth storing in my brain.
People love to tell you information that you clearly don’t care about at all and will never again use or think about in your entire life. Unless you’re at trivia. Then, somehow something a random person at Dillard’s told you eight years ago about canoeing will come up as a question, and you’ll wish you had paid attention so you could win that $15 gift card for your team. THEN, because of that, you start to regret not paying attention to the random things people tell you and you try to commit them all to memory from then on, but you stop going to trivia because the music is too loud and they no longer give discounts on the appetizers so it’s not even worth it and it all becomes a colossal waste of your precious brain capacity and it takes away time you could’ve spent zoning out.
So no, I will not be paying attention to the fact you so desperately want to share with me that I know you just read off a Snapple cap. How about you ask yourself if you should be sharing this with me, instead? Put it on my tombstone: “To tell or not to tell, THAT is the question”.
Branch Out
If you like pictures of cute animals or incredible photos of nature, you need to check out the National Park Service’s Instagram account.
I recommend starting HERE with a picture of an otter eating a mussel (insert “awww”).