Coral Reef: Fragile, Crucial And On The Brink

Coral reefs can now be read like tree rings or glacier ice, mapping environmental change over time. What emerges from these sea core samples, besides climatic shifts, is a scientifically-deduced history of human land use practices spanning the past couple of hundred years. Studies of coral reef systems in Australia and Western Africa indicate that western-style agricultural practices, introduced by Europeans, caused large-scale sustained stress upon reef systems that are as impactful, if not more so, than the usual suspects of over-harvesting, mining, and tourism. In the next Pinhead Town Talk at the Palm Theater on Tuesday, July 10, at 6 pm, a co-author on the leading papers on this topic, Julia E. Cole, University of Arizona associate professor of Geosciences and Atmospheric Sciences, will discuss a range of threats to oceans that people donut typically consider...