TARA Pacific Bleaching Prevalence of Sampling Sites (Islands)

Abstract

To obtain a proxy for the stress level of collected corals, we checked for previous occurrences of bleaching events at sampled reef sites by matching island GPS coordinates to the Reef Check dataset (reefcheck.org) obtained from Sully et al (2019). For each Tara Pacific island coordinate, we determined the Reef Check site that was closest (in terms of distance in km); we only considered Reef Check data that was within a 10 km circumference. We further determined short- and long-term climate variables that are known to affect coral stress resilience for all Tara Pacific collection sites that are available from Lombard et al (2022). These data allow to assess if corals from a given site were exposed higher/lower prevalence of thermal stress events and bleaching prior to sampling (over previous years).