A New View of Coral Reefs
 
Earth's coral reefs teem with diverse forms of life, from microscopic
phytoplankton to whale sharks. As much as one quarter of all ocean species
depend on reefs for food or shelter-a remarkable statistic considering that
reefs cover less than two percent of the ocean bottom.
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6kKSg052c0
 
Coral reef ecosystems play a vital role in maintaining Earth's marine
biodiversity and are valuable economically and culturally. Reefs protect
shorelines from storms, provide food for millions of people and create both
jobs and revenue in the tourism industry.
 
The bad news: reefs are in trouble.
 
Rising water temperatures linked to climate change threaten the health and
function of these fragile ecosystems, triggering events such as coral
bleaching. Overfishing of key fish and invertebrate species and overharvesting
of corals disrupt the natural systems, introducing invasive species and
resulting in coral disease.
 
Researchers aren't sure exactly how bad the status of Earth's coral reefs is,
because very little of the world's reef area has been scientifically studied.
Most coral reef measurements to date have been made by labor-intensive diving
expeditions, which can sample only one very limited site at a time. Many reefs
have never been surveyed at all.
 
Eric Hochberg, associate scientist at the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences
and CORAL project Principal Investigator says, "Right now, the state of the
art for collecting coral reef data is scuba diving with a tape measure. It's
analogous to looking at a few trees and then trying to say what the forest is
doing."
 
Enter NASA: A new three-year NASA field expedition to examine Earth's coral
reefs is now underway.  The CORAL project-short for the "COral Reef Airborne
Laboratory," uses advanced optical instrumentation to survey the condition of
more of the world's coral reefs than has ever been undertaken. This effort
gives scientists a unique opportunity to understand coral reefs ecology and
condition at regional and global scales, rather than relying on patchy,
single-point surveys.
 
CORAL is using an airborne instrument called the Portable Remote Imaging
Spectrometer (PRISM), developed and managed at NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory (JPL). PRISM flies at an altitude of 28,000 feet above the coral
reefs aboard a modified aircraft. According to Michelle Gierach, the CORAL
project scientist at JPL, PRISM was specifically created for remote sensing of
coastal and inland waters. PRISM records the spectra of light reflected upward
toward the instrument from the ocean below, allowing researchers to pick out
the unique details and properties of living corals, algae and sand. The ratio
of coral to algae to sand is an indicator of the coral ecosystem's condition.
When combined with information on the biological, chemical, and physical
processes, these data can provide insight into how the whole ecosystem is
functioning.
 
Flying high in the air at more than 300 miles per hour to rapidly cover broad
areas, Hochberg's team will survey the condition of an unprecedented extent of
reef systems in the central and western Pacific. In September and October of
2016, the team surveyed six discrete areas of Australia's Great Barrier Reef
with a base of operation in the northern portion of the reef. Over the next
year, the team will also survey reef systems in Hawaii, Palau and the Mariana
Islands.
 
"Reefs respond in complex ways to environmental stresses such as sea level
change, rising ocean temperatures and pollution," says Hochberg. "We need
accurate data across many whole reef ecosystems to develop an overarching,
quantitative model that describes why and how reefs change in response to
environmental changes."
 
For more updates from CORAL, and other NASA airborne missions, stay tuned to
science.nasa.gov.
 
 
Regards,
 
Roger

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