Combining real-time measurements of acidity and calcification, and long-term records from coral skeletons to provide an understanding of how ocean acidity is affecting the marine envrionment and the role of coral reefs in biffering the oceans capacity to absorb greenhouse gas emissions.

High-precision measurements of changes in oxygen and various parameters of the CO2 system in sea water were used to monitor community metabolism in four Pacific coral reef systems. The reefs studied were One Tree Island and Lizard Island on the Great Barrier Reef, Kaneohe Bay, Oahu Island, Hawaii and Johnston Island in the central Pacific Ocean. This research was undertaken to gain further understanding of carbon fluxes through coral reef systems at an operational level. Data was collected during November 1961 at Heron Island, and during September- November, 1967 at One Tree Island.

The study is based on field investigations of clear-water coral reefs and seagrass communities around three cool volcanic seeps of ~99% CO2 gas, and at three adjacent control sites with similar geomorphology, seawater temperature and salinity, that fringe the D'Entrecastraux Islands, Milne Bay Province, Papua New Guinea. Co2 has been streaming from the seabed for over 70 years (likely much longer), resulting in localised acidified conditions: seeps (pCO2 ,500 to 900 ppm, pHTotal 7.8 – 7.9) adjacent control areas (pCO2 ,390 ppm,pHTotal ,8.0 – 8.05) Field surveys were conducted from 2010 to characterise seawater chemistry and ecological and physiological conditions in coral reefs control sites and seeps. See Fabricius et al. (2011) for further details. Environmental parameters (measured: pH, dissolved inorganic carbon, total alkalinity, salinity, and temperature; calculated with CO2SYS software: pCO2 and aragonite saturation state) were obtained across a 4-year period (2010–2013) at 1–5 m depth in both control and seep sites. A total of 433 colonies were sampled from six species of scleractinian coral: Acropora millepora, Pocillopora damicornis, Seriatopora hystrix, Poritescylindrica, massive Porites sp. and Galaxea fascicularis. Favites pentagona was the only species that occurred in moderate abundance at the extreme seep site and 10 colonies were sampled from the Upa-Upasina seep. DNA sequencing and statistical analysis was conducted, see Noonan et al. (2013) Samples of A. millepora, G. fasciularis, P.damicornis, and massive Porites. Analysis were analyised for skeletal porosity, bulk density and micro-density as described in the paper Prada et.al (2021), led by the team at the University of Bologna, Italy.

This dataset contains carbonate chemistry data collected at both random locations and existing long-term sites in the Florida Keys, Dry Tortugas, Flower Garden Banks and Southeast Florida as part of the NOAA National Coral Reef Monitoring Program (NCRMP). These data are collected and analyzed to assess spatial and temporal variation in the seawater carbonate systems of coral reef ecosystems and include two types of sampling methods. The first method is collected by hand or niskin at the surface, either from the boat or by SCUBA divers. The second method uses subsurface autosamplers where water samples provided in this dataset were collected at a depth of approximately 15m. Samples are either collected singularly or as part of a diurnal set. The samples are processed by the Atlantic Oceanographic Meteorological Laboratory (AOML) where they are analyzed for total alkalinity (TA), dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) and Spectrophotometric pH. Using the analyzed TA and DIC, alongside temperature, salinity and depth data, AOML staff calculated other important carbonate chemistry system parameters such as pH, pCO2, and aragonite saturation and reported the results in this dataset.