Glogowski, Silke (2017) Water mass dynamics around cold-water coral reefs in the North Atlantic. (PhD/ Doctoral thesis), Christian-Albrechts-Universität, Kiel, XXXVI, 175 pp.

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Abstract

Cold-water coral reefs are distributed all over the world’s oceans and form a high variety of ecosystems depending on their specific environmental factors. The surrounding parameter of cold-water coral reef growth is characterised by hydrophysical signals such as temperature and salinity, both yielded in potential density as a function of temperature, salinity and pressure. Within the past years a serious increase in knowledge on these cold-water coral occurrences and their hydrographic boundary conditions yielded worldwide, especially in the north-east Atlantic. This study investigates in the assessment of the environmental conditions of cold-water coral (CWC) growth in response to geochemical, hydrographic and oceanographic boundary processes. This study aims to unravel the environmental signals that influence CWC growth in different latitudes, which are of great importance for growth and occurrences. For this purpose, cold-water coral reefs in the north Atlantic margin, in the Gulf of Mexico, off Bahamas, in the Bay of Biscay, and off Morocco as well as Mauretania were selected. The comparison of data sets collected with identical tools yielded detailed information on the environmental conditions needed for healthy cold-water-reef growth.

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