Second Paper - Coral Reefs: Biology, Geology & Politics

Paper length: ca 2-3 single-spaced pages. That's not 1.1 pages; I'm thinking a few lines short of 2 here. Also......PLEASE, no more than 3 pages.

Deadline: See e-syllabus

Coral-reef monitoring since the 1960's has shown a systematic decline in coral cover on many of the world's reefs and a replacement by macroalgae (see Hughes, 1994). While this decline in coral cover is well-documented and real, the question remains whether this is the start of a long-term decline related to human stress or just reflects a natural tendancy for systems like coral reefs to wax and wane over the short run. In a paper entitled "Pleistocene Perspectives on Coral Reef Community Structure" Jeremy Jackson states that, "The fossil record suggests that coral reef community structure is stable in the long run. Thus, it should be possible to predict changes in reef communities in response to human interferance, and shape management policies accordingly.” (Jackson, 1992: p. 727) Implicit in this statement is the idea that perhaps Pleistocene coral reefs might represent a sort of pre-anthropogenic model for coral reefs that can be contrasted with the reef decline that we have seen in recent decades.

The focus of the second paper is how we might use the fossil record to put more recent events into a longer-term context and thus choose between anthropogenically induced decline versus a natural boom-and-bust cycle simply on the "down-side for now". Start by reading Jackson's 1992 paper which is posted on the eres site. Two other papers that have more recently weighed in on the subject are: Pandolfi (2002) and Hughes et al (2003). An interesting paper that deals with historical reef change is Jackson (1997). All the papers I have mentioned here are available at the class eres site. These can serve as the basis for your second essay, thus reducing the need to do a lot of primary research to find appropriate papers. You are, however, encouraged to use the bibliographies of the more recent papers to perhaps find another reference or two that might support your ideas.

The question you are being asked is as follows:

Given that we do not have 200 years to monitor reefs to see if the recent decline of corals might just be part of a longer-term boom-and-bust cycle, we need to look for other avenues to understand longer-term change. The two obvious options are historical and geological records. Write a coherent essay that describes how we might use a) the century-scale record of written history and b) the more-distant geologic record (thousands to millions of years) to put recent changes into a longer temporal context and pehaps make intelligent projections about coral reefs in the near future. In your essay, consider both the pro's and con's of using these records (for the geologic record, assume we're only talking back to the Pleistocene where the coral species were largely the same as we have today), citing evidence from the literature where possible.

I'm not asking you to tell me how much is Homo stupidus and how much is not - that's the third essaay. What I'm looking for is your understanding of how we might use history and geology to address questions of "future biology" - and what the potential landmines are that we neeed to keep at the fore. . I suggest that you get started now by reading the articles and starting to think about the question above. All the papers are pretty "chewy", and will probably take a couple of read-throughs to digest, so I suggest that you start to read them as soon as possible and come up with things you might want to ask about. START TODAY.

For paper "re-do's in 2009 only: The revised version is due no later than 9:00 AM on Monday. Printed papers (no emails) must be submitted with the original grading slip attached.