Abstract:
Extension, Density, and Calcification data from 35 Porites coral cores covering
the entire length of the Great Barrier Reef, Australia. Data set contains 35
individual core data sets plus time series 1746-1982 of average calcification
rate for 10 of these sites. The Australian Institute of Marine Science began
collecting cores from very large massive colonies of Porites on the Great
Barrier
... Reef in the early 1980s. Such cores cannot normally be identified to
species. The cores were mounted and sawn to remove slices that were about 6-7mm
thick. All slices were X-rayed and skeletal density measured along a central
track on each slice using a gamma densitometer. The high density portion of
annual density bands in Porites from the Great Barrier Reef appears to form
usually between October and March, the Southern Hemisphere summer. Peaks in the
density profiles were successively counted backwards from the last (outermost
or youngest) peak. Density was assumed to peak in January and the most recent
peak was dated from the date of collection of the core. Dates were then
assigned to all peaks in the series. Time series of the following skeletal
growth parameters were then obtained: 1) Average annual density (g.cm-3) 2)
Annual linear extension measured between high density peaks (cm.yr-1) 3) Annual
calcification (g.cm-2.yr-1_; the product of annual average density and annual
linear extension. These data were obtained from coral cores taken at 35 sites
on the Great Barrier Reef. The density profiles do not always display regular,
obvious annual peaks and we could not be absolutely sure of the dating for some
profiles. We consider there may be errors of + or - 2-3 years in the starting
data of some of these series. File AIMS10CoreAvg.txt: Time series of average
calcification rate is based on 10 Porites corals for 1746-1982: Jeannie
River, Flinders Reef, Brook Island, Britomart Reef, Lodestone Reef, Wheeler
Reef, Havannah Island, Hook Island, Sanctuary Reef, and Abraham Reef. 3 series
are presented: 1) Annual average values expressed as standardized anomalies;
each of the 10 series was converted to standardized anomalies with respect to
1934-1982 mean and sd; resulting series then averaged for 10 corals. 2) Annual
average standardized anomales filtered with 5-year gaussian filter. 3) Annual
average series converted to original calcification units (g.cm-2.yr-1) filtered
with 5-year gaussian filter. Because of potential dating errors the last two
series are considered to be most reliable. Lough and Barnes (1997) suggest that
~30% of the variance in the 10-coral calcification series can be explained by
variations of annual sea-surface temperature. On-line data are available free
of charge, other forms are available for the cost of reproduction. 
