Oceanographic drivers of bleaching in the GBR: from observations to prediction. Volume 3 : Development of a hazard map for the Great Barrier Reef to predict regions with a lower risk of persistent warming and coral bleaching / Eduardo Klein, Craig Steinberg and Neal Cantin

For the first time, back-to-back mass coral bleaching occurred on the Great Barrier Reef and Torres Strait in 2016 and 2017 as part of a continuous global bleaching event that started in late 2014 (Eakin et al, 2018). The combined effect has meant that the majority of the reef has been severely affected; however, there remain significant areas that have survived along the length of the GBR. This project seeks to understand how reef scale, regional and global oceanographic and meteorological processes influence the severity and spatial variability of thermally driven coral bleaching for the Great Barrier Reef and Torres Strait. -- Summary.

Volume 3 - Development of a hazard map for the Great Barrier Reef to predict regions with a lower risk of persistent warming and coral bleaching. A hazard map is a framework for risk assessment consisting of a series of geographical layers or maps that defines: a) The location of static conditions that may induce or reduce the incidence of bleaching in coral communities. These layers include the detailed bathymetry and derived characteristics, like the steepness of the reefs front and the presence of inter-reef channels; b) The climatology of some oceanographic and meteorological variables that are knownto be a factor that could induce or protect the corals from bleaching, like accumulated heat, recurrent upwelling areas, tidal mixing areas, photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) and the probability of mixing of the water column; and c) The anomaly maps for each of the analysed variables for 2016 and 2017 related to its climatology. This report presents the climatology and the corresponding anomalies of oceanographic and meteorological variables that may promote or protect coral reeffrom bleaching. The potential of a predictive capability using this technique is also explored.(Preface, page viii).