Coral Reef Ecosystem - Essay Example

The best requirements for coral reefs to thrive include warm, sunny, clear, shallow, and agitated waters. In most cases, corals deliver ecosystem services like tourism, shoreline protection, and the fishing industry. It has to be noticed that corals are fragile and are easy to destroy from such threats as cyanide fishing, oceanic acidification, changes in the climatic conditions of the oceanic environment, and blast fishing. Coral reefs, therefore, are mostly found in the oceanic environment where there are large quantities of calcium carbonate. Structure of the Ecosystem; Biotic and Abiotic Coral reefs consist of both biotic and abiotic factors and this determines the living and the non-living parts of the ecosystem respectively. The biotic factors encompass all the life forms that are within the coral reefs and this includes the following; the density of the coral polyps, the fish population in the waters, the wide range of the molluscs population, all the populations of echinoderms, the population of zooplanktons and those of benthic crustacean.

All these constitute the biotic part of the coral reefs (Nichols and Williams 41). With regard to abiotic factor, there are also a number of conditions mostly environmental that constitutes abiotic factor, they include; water temperature, the PH of the water, water salinity, the dissolved mineral in water, and the suspended particles of inorganic matter in water. There are also other factors such as the strength of the current, the sunlight reaching the coral reefs, the degree of dissolved oxygen in the water as well as the depth/ pressure of the water on coral reefs.

Carbon and Nitrogen cycle of the Ecosystem Coral reefs contribute to the carbon cycle through the calcification process, they release carbon dioxide gas that eventually reacts with other bases until equilibrium is reached, and this depends on the buffering capacity of the water. The coral reefs through the cycling of the nitrogen molecules through water and the atmosphere in cycles and continuous manner also necessitate nitrogen fixation. Disturbance and Recovery of the Ecosystem Coral reefs suffer unprecedented disturbance from humans and other natural occurrence in equal measure.

With reference to human disturbance, a legion of activities results in the disturbance considering the fragility of the reefs (Davidson 62). Some of the ways through which disturbances occur by humans are; industrial discharges into the lakes come with a number of chemicals that are detrimental to the development of the corals and kill them. Construction activities in the ocean environment also facilitate activities that disturb the growth of the coral reefs, such activities include; port development, dredging, reclamation works, and industrial development.

Port activities also increase the disturbance of the coral reefs through spills of cargo and the associated petrochemicals (Nichols and Williams 59). There are also natural factors that affect coral reefs and this includes; ocean currents, strong oceanic currents may sweep the corals and disintegrates them leading to their disturbances. Unfavourable biotic factors such as light wavelength, pressure, and poor oxygen distribution in the ocean can also lead to disturbances in the growth and development of the corals.

Ecosystem recovery based on the Resilience mechanism and the theory of Secondary Succession Coral reefs faces a number of disturbances and needs to recover from the shock that manifests to them in daily occurrence, there are fishing activities in the ocean, global warming menace is also another factor that is an effecting the coral reefs and once this happens. The life of the coral reefs are placed in danger and they need to recover from the stress, most of the biotic factors that are responsible for the growth and development of the corals are affected, when this happens, the natural balancing mechanism of the corals will enable the multiplication of these microbes that are essential in the coral development.