Lord Howe Island coral reef assemblages were surveyed between March 2010 and September 2012 following successive marine heatwaves. The dataset quantifies the response and resilience of approximately 42,000 coral colonies from different taxa to bleaching events, assessing changes in benthic community composition before, during, and after thermal stress. The data supports a study published in Science of The Total Environment in 2020.
Use Cases
- Model coral bleaching severity based on taxa susceptibility and depth mentioned in the description
- Analyze benthic community shifts from coral-dominated to macroalgae-dominated assemblages following repeated stress
- Assess coral recovery timelines based on pigmentation and color return observations
- Study the impact of fast phase transitions from El Niño to La Niña on high-latitude reef ecosystems
Strengths
- Approximately 42,000 coral colonies surveyed, providing a substantial sample size
- Data spans a multi-year period from March 2010 to September 2012, capturing before, during, and after event states
- Quantifies bleaching severity with specific percentages, e.g., 99% at shallow lagoon sites and 17% at deeper reef slope sites
Limitations
- Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download
- Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment
- Data may reflect geographic bias inherent to data_gov_au, focusing solely on Lord Howe Island
Provenance
- Source
- Geoscience Australia Data
- Collection Method
- Coral health surveys completed between March 2010 and September 2012.
- Time Range
- March 2010 to September 2012
- Freshness
- Last updated 2026-04-20 03:23:01.664297; freshness should be verified
- Geography
- High-latitude coral reef assemblages around Lord Howe Island