[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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