Climate-driven alterations to disturbance regimes are increasingly disrupting patterns of recovery in many biomes. Here, we examine the impact of disturbance and subsequent level of recovery in live hard coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) across the last three decades. We demonstrate that a preexisting pattern of infrequent disturbances of limited spatial extent has changed to larger and more frequent disturbances, dominated by marine heatwaves and severe tropical cyclones. We detected an increase in the impact (measured as coral loss) across 265 individual disturbance impacts on 131 reefs in a 36-year dataset (1985–2022). Additionally, the number of survey reefs impacted by disturbance has increased each decade from 6% in the 1980s to 44% in the 2010s, as has the frequency of mass coral bleaching across the GBR, which has increased between 19% and 28% per year, and cyclones (3%–5% per year), resulting in less time for recovery. Of the 265 disturbance impacts we recorded, complete recovery to the highest levels of coral cover recorded earlier in this study (the “historical benchmark”) occurred only 62 (23%) times. Of the 23% of disturbance impacts that resulted in complete recovery to historical benchmarks, 34/62 recovered to their benchmark in 2021 or 2022. Complete recovery was more likely when the historical benchmark was <25% live hard coral cover. The lack of recovery was attributed to recovery time windows becoming shorter due to increases in the frequency of cyclones and of thermal stress events that result in mass coral bleaching episodes. These results confirm that climate change is contributing to ecosystem-wide changes in the ability of coral reefs to recover.

中文翻译：

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增加干扰频率会破坏珊瑚礁的恢复


气候驱动的干扰机制的改变日益扰乱许多生物群落的恢复模式。在这里，我们研究了过去三十年来大堡礁（GBR）活硬珊瑚覆盖的干扰和随后的恢复水平的影响。我们证明，先前存在的有限空间范围内的不频繁扰动模式已经转变为更大、更频繁的扰动，以海洋热浪和严重热带气旋为主。我们在 36 年数据集中（1985 年至 2022 年）发现，对 131 个珊瑚礁的 265 个单独干扰影响的影响（以珊瑚损失衡量）有所增加。此外，受干扰影响的调查珊瑚礁数量每十年增加一次，从 1980 年代的 6% 增加到 2010 年代的 44%，大堡礁大规模珊瑚白化的频率也是如此，每年增加 19% 至 28%和气旋（每年 3%–5%），导致恢复时间更短。在我们记录的 265 次干扰影响中，仅 62 次 (23%) 完全恢复到本研究早期记录的珊瑚覆盖最高水平（“历史基准”）。在导致完全恢复到历史基准的 23% 干扰影响中，有 34/62 在 2021 年或 2022 年恢复到基准。当历史基准低于 25% 活硬珊瑚覆盖率时，完全恢复的可能性更大。恢复不足的原因是，由于气旋和热应激事件频率增加，导致大规模珊瑚白化事件，恢复时间窗口变得更短。这些结果证实，气候变化正在导致整个生态系统珊瑚礁恢复能力的变化。