[Coral-List] Rising sea levels may not submerge atoll islands
Douglas Fenner
douglasfennertassi at gmail.com
Tue Aug 12 18:49:42 EDT 2014
>From Science Now (free online general interest articles you can sign up
for):
"Warming may not swamp islands."
http://news.sciencemag.org/asiapacific/2014/07/warming-may-not-swamp-islands
The original short article in Science that this is based on has a sentence
I particularly like, which goes
"As long as the reef is healthy and generates an abundant supply of sand,
there’s no reason a reef island can’t grow and keep up."
That is, of course, a very big "if." If on the other hand, global
warming-caused mass coral bleaching, acidification, sedimentation,
nutrients, overfishing, etc. severely damage the corals and/or coralline
algae, then maybe reefs and islands won't be able to keep up. Healthy
corals and reefs will be critical, atoll island survival hangs in the
balance.
Cheers, Doug
--
Douglas Fenner
Contractor with Ocean Associates, Inc.
PO Box 7390
Pago Pago, American Samoa 96799 USA
phone 1 684 622-7084
"belief in climate change is optional, participation is not."
belief in evolution is optional, use of antibiotics that bacteria have not
evolved resistance to is recommended.
website: http://independent.academia.edu/DouglasFenner
Blog:
http://cctus.org/conservation-science/2014-expedition-scholar/2014-expedition-scholar-douglas-fenner-ph-d/2014-expedition-scholar-blog/
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