![]() ![]() This Australian Research Council Discovery project will look at the of role of advection, anthropogenic organic matter enrichment, ocean acidification and warming on net ecosystem calcification and carbonate sediment dissolution across the Great Barrier Reef, Australia. As such, understanding the factors controlling net ecosystem calcification and associated carbonate sediment dissolution is important for understanding the future of coral reef ecosystems (Eyre et al. For this state of positive accretion to occur, net ecosystem calcification (NEC), or the chemical measure of the net production of carbonate material of an ecosystem, must be positive. However, for coral reef structures, and other carbonate ecosystems, to be in a state of net accumulation and vertical growth, the net production of carbonate (and external sediment supply) must exceed its loss through physical erosion and dissolution (Eyre et al., 2014). 1998), and a large proportion the sediment produced is transported off of the source reef ecosystem to local shelf environments (Ryan et al. These sediments can comprise a very large proportion of the calcium carbonate in carbonate ecosystems, representing up to 95% of the aerial benthic coverage in some coral reefs ecosystems (Gattuso et al. Sediments represent the storage of detrital carbonate material (eroded from the solid reef) and the skeletal remains of other benthic producers that have accumulated over thousands of years (Smith et al., 2009). Carbonate platforms, coral reef frameworks, and modern shallow reef environments such as lagoons, reef flats and coral sand cays and carbonate sand islands and beaches, that are formed from neritic carbonate sediments, don’t only play a central role in the global carbon cycle, but they also provide a myriad of ecosystem services, such as habitats for marine life, fishing, tourism, and human habitation (Hoegh-Guldberg 2007 Storlazzi et al.
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