Australia: half of the Great Barrier Reef's corals lost in 25 years
Environment — di Andrea Barolini
A study raises a new alarm about the Great Barrier Reef: half of its corals have been lost in 25 years, primarily due to climate change.
Australia: half of the Great Barrier Reef's corals lost in 25 years
A study raises a new alarm about the Great Barrier Reef: half of its corals have been lost in 25 years, primarily due to climate change.
Half of the corals of the Australian Great Barrier Reef have died in the past 25 years. The grim news is contained in a study published on Wednesday 14 October by the scientific journal Proceedings of the Royal Society, according to which climate warming is irreversibly disrupting this marine ecosystem, the natural habitat of numerous species.
Australia’s Great Barrier Reef 'has lost half its corals since 1995’ independent.co.uk/environment/au…
5 severe bleaching events on the Great Barrier Reef from 1998 to today
Since the mid-1990s, the Great Barrier Reef off Australia has begun recording a decline across all types of corals. Those most severely affected by ocean warming are branching corals, to the point that some have disappeared entirely from the northernmost section of the site, which has been a Unesco World Heritage site since 1981.
What is killing the corals is the phenomenon of bleaching, caused precisely by excessively high water temperatures. Between 2016 and 2017, the Great Barrier Reef suffered two unprecedented events. Previously, two other severe bleaching episodes had been recorded in 1998 and 2002. A fifth was then observed this year, and an assessment of the damage is still awaited.
Half of the Great Barrier Reef's corals have died over the past 25 years, scientists report
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"Profound changes to the entire ecosystem"
"The Great Barrier Reef," Terry Hughes told AFP, a professor at James Cook University and one of the study's authors, "is home to a large number of fish and other marine creatures. Losing the corals will bring about profound changes to the entire ecosystem." And also to the Australian economy: activities linked to the corals in various capacities are estimated to generate revenues of four billion dollars a year for the tourism sector.