Session Abstracts.

Session 1: Paleoenvironment reconstructions, paleontology (Thomas Felis, Jens Zinke)

Coral reefs provide high-resolution archives of local environmental change at specific reef sites as well as large-scale variations in ocean-atmosphere dynamics (e.g., the ENSO phenomenon). Recent progress in proxy development and analytical techniques has enabled reconstructions of temperature, hydrologic balance/salinity, circulation, upwelling, terrestrial runoff and pH of the surface ocean at subdecadal to subseasonal resolution. Most of these proxy records are derived from massive annually-banded scleractinian corals, supported by records generated from sclerosponges and clams. Such paleoenvironmental records have a great potential to bring environmental data from recently established reef monitoring programmes and large-scale ocean observing systems into the long-term context of the last centuries. In addition to living reefs, well-dated fossil reefs and their paleogeographic distribution provide crucial information on paleoclimate and sea-level changes in the more distant geological past. Information on the response of reefs to past environmental changes under boundary conditions different from today provide an important benchmark in successfully assessing and predicting the future of coral reefs in a changing climate.

We expect a stimulating session on all aspects of and latest developments in:

Environmental records in reef organisms
Fossil reefs and corals as archives
Paleoclimate and sea-level change
Paleogeographic distribution of reefs
Reefs in siliciclastic settings

Session 2: Modern reef development and environmental impacts on carbonate production (Eberhard Gischler, Chris Perry).

Session dedicated to the memory of Terry Scoffin

We would like to invite submission of abstracts for a thematic session on "Modern reef development and environmental impacts on carbonate production".

Key themes to be considered in this session will be:

Controls on, and histories of, Holocene reef accretion.
Structural consequences of large-scale disturbance events (cyclones, tsunami, coral bleaching), and
Reef sediments and sediment records of environmental disturbance and change.

Session 3: Temperate, deep and cold water reef communities (Jan Helge Fosså)

Traditionally the ISRS European Conference has been a venue for tropical coral reef scientists, but in Cambridge 2002, a session on deep-cold-water corals was included for the first time. The session was very successful and it is now hoped for a worthy follow-up. Research on tropical reefs represents a long and strong tradition and cold-water coral scientists may benefit from interacting with their “tropical” colleagues, and vice versa.

The interest in cold-water coral research has increased in recent years. This is reflected in the growing number of participants from the “1st International Symposium on Deep-Sea corals” in 2000 in Halifax to the 3rd in 2005 in Florida. It is an exciting research field, but also there is a huge demand for knowledge from marine managers and society in general because coral species and habitats are threatened by human use of the sea. In various regions of the world the deep coral communities are so extensive that they are likely to play a major role in the local/regional ecosystem. This is one of the reasons why it is important to describe the ecological significance (importance as fish habitat, biodiversity hot spots) of the corals and to understand their role in the marine food web.

Along these lines papers on the following themes are invited:

Distributions and explanatory factors (present and past)
Reef development and morphology (present and past)
Significance of corals as habitat for species
The role of cold-water corals in the marine food web
Ecological consequences of damage or impact to coral communities
Management – useful practices, design and effectiveness of MPAs

These topics include many aspects of ongoing research, but please feel free not to be limited by these suggestions.

Session 4: State of Indian Ocean and adjacent seas-reefs (Andrew Baird, Tim McClanahan)

Reefs of the Indian Ocean have recently been subjected to a series of unprecedented cataclysmic disturbances including the Indian Ocean Dipole upwelling in 1997, the El Nino of 1998 and the Sumatra-Andaman tsunami of 2004. These events provide a significant opportunity to determine the effects of rare disturbances on reef ecosystems and dependent people. In addition, many reefs are situated in areas, such as the Persian Gulf, with extreme fluctuations in environmental variables and studies of the biology of the organism may provide important clues on the potential of reefs to adapt to climate change. Furthermore, some regions in the Indian Ocean remain isolated either geographically or politically, and have yet to be adequately described (e.g. reefs of the Andaman Sea, and western Sumatra).

In this session, we invite papers that explore themes including:

Indian Ocean reef status and trends, in particular the effects of reef degradation on reefs and associated livelihoods
Biology and ecology of reef organisms living in extreme environments
Biological and ecological effects of the Sumatra-Andaman tsunami, in particular, studies addressing the putative protective role of marine and coastal ecosystems
Descriptive studies from previously unstudied locations

Session 5: Oceanography and plankton (Amatzia Genin, Claudio Richter)

Coral reef processes are tightly linked to the physics and biology of their surrounding waters. Cross-boundary exchanges of planktonic food, eggs, larvae, nutrients, dissolved gases, and heat are crucial in shaping the reef community. Reefs, reef islands and headlands, in turn, generate complex secondary flows which are responsible for retention and dispersal – e.g. the self-seeding of some reefs vs. connectivity between others. Currents and topography interact in the generation of fronts which provide a sorting mechanism for drifting, floating, sinking and actively swimming particles affecting the distribution of sediments, eggs, larvae and plankton near coral reefs.

We invite papers on:

Field and modeling studies of advection, internal waves and turbulence near coral reefs
Reef effects on plankton, pelagic productivity, and microbial food-web
Pelagic-benthic coupling
Effects of advection and topography on pelagic ecological processes – plankton aggregation near fronts
Effects of advection and turbulence on benthic boundary layer processes
Advection and gene flow - retention and dispersal of larvae

Session 6: Key taxa and processes (Christine Ferrier-Pagès, Sylvie Tambutté)

Session 6 will be dedicated to some key aspects of coral physiology and ecophysiology from the gene to the ecosystem. Processes involved in photosynthesis and calcification, as well as interactions between both processes will be considered. Studies on heterophy will concern both coral feeding and the effect of food supply on the animal metabolism. Studies concerning the moving field of gene flow and coral genomics will be highly welcome.

Key themes to be considered in this session will be:

Processes of photosynthesis and calcification: from the gene to the ecosystem
Heterotrophy, coral feeding
Gene flow/coral genomics

Session 7: Reef ecological processes (Marta Ribes, Christian Wild)

In spite of decades of research on ecosystem science, many of its most fundamental questions still revolve around the transfer of organisms, matter, energy and related essential elements between system components. During recent years new methodologies are allowing us a better quantification of system fluxes and gain insight into how major ecosystem players, both species and functional groups, may interact with each other and the physical environment. Trophic dynamics of tropical coral reef ecosystems has called attention because of the role of these reefs in globally important biogeochemical processes. Studies on the sources of essential elements as well as on the factors controlling their uptake, and recycling are crucial ecological processes to understand reef functioning, the evaluation of human impact and for any conservation action.

The session encourages papers that examine:

Trophic dynamics and nutrient cycling,
Microbe-metazoan interactions,
Food webs and ecosystem structure.

Session 8: Long-term or large-scale observations of changes in reef communities I (Katharina Fabricius)

This session will serve as a forum to discuss long-term or large-scale changes in coral reef communities, to better understand and manage coral reefs. Successful reef management requires an integrative, ecosystem-wide science approach (ecohydrology), based on observational data, experiments and integrative ecosystem models. This session invites contributions that will help to better understand natural variation, and system responses to altered regimes such as terrestrial runoff through catchment modification, deteriorating water quality and increasing fishing pressures. Presentations may explore, but are not restricted to, concepts and relationships involving nutrient availability, predation, coral-algal dynamics, crown-of-thorns starfish, ecosystem health, ecological indicators and phase shifts. Studies may cover time scales spanning from geological to ecological periods, and/or spatial scales from regional to basin-wide studies.

Session 9: Long-term large-scale observations of changes in reef communities II (Carles Pelejero, Hiroya Yamano)

Any efforts to preserve, protect, and manage coral reefs need of reliable programs for quantitatively monitoring, mapping and assessing the dynamics of community distribution. This allows the investigation of environmental stressor-response relationships and provides the capability to efficiently screen and predict the current and future health of these biodiversity rich ecosystems. In this session, we wish to invite contributions covering a wide range of questions and scales. First, we aim at focusing on the emerging environmental problem of ocean acidification, both from an observational point of view, with actual instrumental measurements or proxy-derived trends in reef-water pH and other parameters of the CO2 system in seawater and, on the other hand, from an ecological perspective of possible threats that future acidification will pose to coral communities. Any kind of experimental work addressed to unravel this issue will be most welcome as a contribution to this session. Second, we would also like to invite contributions focused in the ecological effects of disturbances (e.g., coral bleaching) from different approaches, experimental, theoretical and from long-term large-scale observations. Third, we intend to assess and demonstrate the effectiveness of being able to monitor coral reefs and their surrounding environment using remote sensing, a powerful scientific discipline that continues to improve through advances in detector technologies, the acquisition of spectral information on bottom features, increases in the spatial and spectral resolution of sensors, as well as by improved computer capabilities and analysis methods. We strongly encourage contributions on the use of these techniques, with examples of successful applications in the understanding of coral reef communities and their unique ecosystems.

Session 10: Stress responses in corals (Barbara Brown, John Bythell)

The above session welcomes papers on stress responses of corals at the organism, cell and molecular levels. In particular we would encourage papers that improve our understanding of disease processes in corals; that further our knowledge of the bleaching response and which clarify the interactions between bleaching and disease.

Session 11: Biodiversity of coral reefs - from molecules to communities (Rolf Bak, Serge Planes)

The biodiversity of coral reefs has many aspects for reef scientists. It is an axiom to some, an enigma to others, a fast changing characteristic of reefs to many. We expect a stimulating session on all aspects of biodiversity and latest developments in: The scope of our interest is wide, from changes in biodiversity on reefs through species losses and gains, including invasive species, to population genetics, phylogeography, molecular systematics and evolution of corals, fishes, sponges and other taxa.

Session 12: Reef protection and management (Annette Mühlig-Hofmann, Nicholas Polunin)

Probably the most widespread set of human impacts on coral reefs is that caused by resource exploitation. But there are many wide-on questions about regional trajectories of decline in major resources, the baselines from which these have come, the complex systemic consequences of this exploitation and the interaction of these impacts with others such as nutrient inputs and coral bleaching. A major current activity in coastal management is area-based control of exploitation, using no-take zones and partial closures, yet the scientific basis of such measures remains inadequate. Understanding the socio-economic origins of these impacts is crucial; why do people use resource-depleting and otherwise destructive techniques, how do they perceive the resources targeted and wider environment, and what does it take to sustain compliance through co-management? These questions and issues will be at the heart of this session, which welcomes original studies from around the tropics spanning the natural and social sciences and humanities.

Session 13: Reef rehabilitation (Buki Rinkevich, Alasdair Edwards)

The decline of coral reefs worldwide has prompted the need for urgent development of adequate rehabilitation and restoration methodologies. In many cases protection of reefs failed to prevent further habitat degradation. Hence, active measures are numerous, but not all are ecologically compatible. Adequate concepts of reef restoration, preferably embedded in theories of uw-landscape ecology, are still in their infancies and state-of-the-art remediation protocols are rare. Another point for consideration is the overharvesting of reef organisms for food and ornamental trade, degrading reef health as well.

In this session, we welcome original studies on:

Reef rehabilitation and restoration
Concepts for reef restoration
Reef rehabilitation sites, case studies
Mariculture of corals and other reef organisms

Session 14: Capacity building, public awareness and outreach (Moshira Hassan)

Coral reefs face a range of threats, which are also complex and dynamic, and frequently cross geographical and jurisdictional scales. As such, no single actor has the ability to enact reef protection. However, by building coalitions and outreach programmes for reef conservation and management, stakeholders can greatly increase their effectiveness. National governments, state organisations, donor agencies, non-governmental organisations and foundations, the private sector, local communities and the wider public have sought to engage each other’s relative strengths through partnerships and co-management initiatives. The input of each of these groups is sought.

This session invites papers that explore themes of:

The development and evaluation of skills, resources, and institutions for coral reef conservation, and learning from management successes and failures;
Communication of coral reef issues to the broader public;
Increasing the awareness of stakeholders, decision makers, and the general public regarding
- reef related issues, especially to threats to coral reefs
- the possible solutions each of them can contribute to improving the situation;
The development of conservation partnerships and active engagement with stakeholders.

Session 15: Topics of general interest (Pedro Alcolado, Jamaludin Jompa)

The complexity of coral reef ecosystems has challenged scientists to better understand various biological aspects, interactions between organisms, and those affecting coral reef resilience, as well as realistic management tools for sustainable use of coral reefs.

This session deals with topics of general interest of great conservation and management relevance, including ecological adaptations in response to interactions between reef organisms, impacts of various different stress factors, and ecological assessment tools for better management.

Presentations encompass diverse areas of the world, including the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, Indonesia, and Caribbean. Ecological adaptations are presented by examples of strong interactions between reef organisms e.g. corals and fishes. This session also presents the effects of disturbances from natural one such as bleaching to impact of human activities such as tourism (e.g diving, snorkeling, and reef trampling). Few papers also contribute to raise some important issues on methods for coral reef ecological assessment, e.g. need-for-protection-index and assessment for marginal reefs. The varied issues presented underline the importance of integration towards a holistic approach in coral reef management.