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 
