News updates

Before bringing together all the aspects of this blog and detailing possible mitigation efforts a quick update of the news coverage of coral islands and their unceratain futures would be useful.

The following article is a detailed account of the Maldives in general and details the threat of climate change. http://abitabout.com/Maldives. On a political front crucially:

'On 22 April 2008, then Maldives President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom pleaded for a cut in global greenhouse gas emissions, warning that rising sea levels could submerge the island nation of the Maldives.'

The Real Science blog posted a 'Settled Science' page listing coral islands future as unsettled. http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/03/30/settled-science/.

'Coral island atolls to sink' - Sea-level rise at tropical Pacific and Indian Ocean islands

By


John A. Church Neil J. White and John R. Hunter

And Conversly

'Coral island atolls to rise' - The dynamic response of reef islands to sea-level rise: Evidence from multi-decadal analysis of island change in the Central Pacific

By


Arthur P. Webb and Paul S. Kench

Both papers are by respected authors in respected journals and have been covered in this blog. This highlights the need to be specific about which islands are in danger and which are not, as due to techtonic and climatic variations, similar looking but geographically distant coral atolls in the same ocean may face very different futures.

Furthermore new techniques are arrising to combat the effects of less suited (warmer) oceans which are rising and contain more threats (human and biological) to coral growth. The following method being particularly ingenious: http://jonbowermaster.com/blog/2011/04/electrified-reefs-may-bring-coral-reefs-back/. Since it is the digestion and excreation of this coral by Parrotfish which can produce 90kg of island building sand (Thurman and Webber, 1984), the protection of the coral is paramount to island acreation rates.

This is a rapidly developing topic, and hopefully this blog has demonstrated the need for concerned parties to stay up to date, with both sides of the scientific/political/cultural debate, to best asses the future of low lying coral islands.

References:

Thurman, H.V., Webber, H.H. 1984.  "Chapter 12, Benthos on the Continental Shelf". Marine Biology. Charles E. Merrill Publishing. pp. 303–313.