PP53C-2353
Using mutiproxy approach to reconstruct 1991 coral mortality episode in the South China Sea
Friday, 18 December 2015
Poster Hall (Moscone South)
Chung-Che WU1, Chuan-Chou Shen2, Ching-Chih Chang3, Yu-Min Chou1, John S Pallister4, Doan Dinh Lam5, Ke-fu Yu6, Liu Yi7, Chung-che Wang8 and Sun-Lin Chung2, (1)Department of Geoscience, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, (2)NTU National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, (3)University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, United States, (4)USGS Cascades Volcano Observ, Vancouver, WA, United States, (5)Institute of Geological Sciences, Vietnamese Academy of Science and Technology, Vietnam, Vietnam, (6)South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, China, (7)USTC University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China, (8)National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan
Abstract:
A mysterious coral mortality occurred in low-latitude of western Pacific and eastern Indian Ocean, during late summer and fall 1991, cannot be simply attributed to El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) episode. Here we present a significant multiproxy records of two modern Porites corals, collected from Son Tra Island (16° 13’ N, 108° 12’ E) and the Meiji Reefs (9° 55’ N, 115° 32’ E), in the western and southern South China Sea (SCS), to probe this coral mortality episode. Both abrupt tephra-inferred REE anomalies reveal that a large amount of fallout by Mt. Pinatubo eruption (15° 14’ N, 120° 35’ E) was sufficient to wreck coral reef ecosystems, leading to the coral mortality in late 1991. Our findings highlight an abrupt event like a giant volcano eruption, may escalate the threat to marine ecosystems under IPCC AR5 global warming scenarios.
