New video abstract highlighting published results on Florida Keys coral-reef erosion
A video abstract summarizing USGS work published in the journal Limnology and Oceanography was released on the journal’s YouTube channel. The work was completed by four scientists from St. Petersburg Coastal & Marine Science Center and collaborators from NOAA and the Florida Institute of Technology.
The loss of thriving coral reefs since the 1970s is well documented throughout the world, as are many of the consequences of the corals’ disappearance. Impacts include loss of marine biodiversity, less productive fisheries, decreased protection of coastlines from storm waves, and reductions in coastal property value. A video abstract was published this week for a paper led by USGS scientists in the journal Limnology and Oceanography. The video is a two-minute synopsis of the work conducted in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary and two National Parks. It complements the paper which highlights a less obvious repercussion of live-coral loss: erosion of the reefs’ physical structure. The natural process of reef erosion is not a problem for reefs that have enough live, healthy corals to sustain them. But for reefs that have lost a lot of coral, large expanses of the reef lay vulnerable to the scraping of fish, and to colonization by sponges and microbes that degrade the reef from the inside out.
The research was conducted in the Florida Keys including sites in Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, Dry Tortugas National Park, and Biscayne National Park.
To read the associated news article in Science Magazine about this and other work visit: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/04/scientists-track-florida-s-vanishing-barrier-reef.
To see the video visit: https://aslopubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/hub/journal/19395590/resources/lo-video-abstracts. To read the article visit: https://aslopubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/lno.11184.
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