Latest Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef Stories
Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Previous studies have shown that warming oceans and ocean acidification threaten to destroy the ocean’s coral reefs. Now, a new study from Australian researchers published in the journal Global Change Biology suggests that yet another threat could decimate these delicate ecosystems. “Our research shows that when seawater is both acidic and warm – which is predicted to happen under future climate scenarios – coral reefs could be...
Using a world-first scientific discovery, Australian researchers are developing a stress-test for coral, to measure how coral reefs are being impacted by pressures from climate change and human activity. The scientists have found hemoglobin genes in the microalgae which live symbiotically with coral, which may provide a readout on how stressed a particular coral is – and how likely it is to bleach and die. Coral bleaching occurs when the symbiotic algae abandon the coral due to...
National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (UK) Coral reefs are predicted to decline under the pressure of global warming. However, a number of coral species can survive at seawater temperatures even higher than predicted for the tropics during the next century. How they survive, while most species cannot, is being investigated by researchers at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS) and New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD). We tend to associate coral reefs with tropical...
Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, the largest coral system in the world, so big that it can be seen from space, is one of the planet’s most remarkable natural wonders. But researchers from University of Queensland have now revealed this precious ecosystem is not faring so well. The problem: European settlement and extensive degradation on mainland Australia. The expansion of European settlement in Australia has been contributing...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The Great Barrier Reef in Australia is the world's largest coral reef, and the only living thing on Earth that is visible from space. The Great Barrier Reef is approximately 3000 kilometers long and up to 65 kilometers wide in some places. According to new research from the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS ), the Great Barrier Reef has lost half of its coral cover in the last 27 years. The research team attributes this...
redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online It has been found that an unevenness of nutrients in reef waters can increase the bleaching vulnerability of reef corals according to Research from the University of Southampton and the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton. Numerous polyps jointly forming a layer of living tissue that cover the calcareous skeletons make up the corals. Single-celled algae called zooxanthellae, which live within the coral polyps, is what they...
redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online The Middle Reef, part of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, is growing more quickly than reefs in other areas with lower levels of sediment stress, a new study has found. Rapid coral reef growth has been identified in environments with large amounts of sediment, conditions previously thought to be detrimental to reef growth. The study, led by the University of Exeter with an international team of scientists, is published today (1...
Scientists have discovered two viruses that appear to infect the single-celled microalgae that reside in corals and are important for coral growth and health, and they say the viruses could play a role in the serious decline of coral ecosystems around the world. These viruses, including an RNA virus never before isolated from a coral, have been shown for the first time to clearly be associated with these microalgae called Symbiodinium. If it's proven that they are infecting those algae and...
redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online John Pandolfi, along with 81 nations and 500 million people, keep hopeful that the world’s coral reefs are not in a lot of trouble. The world-famous coral scientist, from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and University of Queensland, has traced the story of the world’s reefs over more than 50 million years and is translating delicate signals from the past to reveal what doomed them in previous extinctions....
Marine scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have linked the decline in growth of Caribbean forereef corals — due to recent warming — to long-term trends in seawater temperature experienced by these corals located on the ocean-side of the reef. The research was conducted on the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System in southern Belize. The results were revealed online in the July 8 issue of Nature Climate Change, a journal that publishes research on the impacts of...
