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Lauren Toth, Ph.D.

Lauren Toth is a Research Physical Scientist at the St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center in St. Petersburg, Florida.

My research combines ecological approaches with paleoecology, geochemistry, climatology, and statistical modeling to determine the primary controls on coral reef development across a broad range of temporal and spatial scales. As a Mendenhall Postdoctoral Fellow in the Coastal and Marine Geology program, I am using cores of Holocene reef frameworks from throughout the Florida Keys Reef Tract to develop a comprehensive, millennial-scale reconstruction of reef development in this region. The overarching goal of my research program is to determine which combinations of local and global environmental conditions are beneficial or adverse to the growth of coral reefs and to use this information to help guide resource-management decisions.

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Image: Flat Cays, U.S. Virgin Islands Coral Reef

Coral Reef Ecosystem Studies (CREST)

The specific objectives of this project are to identify and describe the processes that are important in determining rates of coral-reef construction. How quickly the skeletons of calcifying organisms accumulate to form massive barrier-reef structure is determined by processes of both construction (how fast organisms grow and reproduce) and destruction (how fast reefs break down by mechanical...
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Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program, St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center, Coral Microbial Ecology Laboratory
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Coral Reef Ecosystem Studies (CREST)

The specific objectives of this project are to identify and describe the processes that are important in determining rates of coral-reef construction. How quickly the skeletons of calcifying organisms accumulate to form massive barrier-reef structure is determined by processes of both construction (how fast organisms grow and reproduce) and destruction (how fast reefs break down by mechanical...
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Map of the Florida Keys Reef Tract

Holocene Coral-Reef Development

With the continuing threat of climate change and other anthropogenic disturbances, the future of Florida's coral reefs is uncertain. One way to gain insights into the future trajectories of Florida's coral reefs is to investigate how they responded to environmental disturbances in the past.
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St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center
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Holocene Coral-Reef Development

With the continuing threat of climate change and other anthropogenic disturbances, the future of Florida's coral reefs is uncertain. One way to gain insights into the future trajectories of Florida's coral reefs is to investigate how they responded to environmental disturbances in the past.
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USGS science for a changing world logo

Local-scale ecosystem resilience amid global-scale ocean change: the coral reef example

Coral reefs are massive, wave resistant structures found throughout the tropics, where they have long attracted attention for their beauty, ecological importance, and rich biological diversity. However, in recent years attention to these systems has focused on their downturn in health and the potential that they effectively could disappear within a century. Yet while many coral reefs have deterio
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John Wesley Powell Center for Analysis and Synthesis
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Local-scale ecosystem resilience amid global-scale ocean change: the coral reef example

Coral reefs are massive, wave resistant structures found throughout the tropics, where they have long attracted attention for their beauty, ecological importance, and rich biological diversity. However, in recent years attention to these systems has focused on their downturn in health and the potential that they effectively could disappear within a century. Yet while many coral reefs have deterio
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Reef-census Data from Buck Island Reef National Monument

In July of 2016, Florida Institute of Technology researchers, in collaboration with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), conducted reef-census surveys at 54 sites around Buck Island Reef National Monument, St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands. The sites are divided across two reef sectors (North and South) and three reef habitats (fore reef, reef crest, and back reef) (Figure 1). These data were used to e
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St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center

Mangrove Peat Radiocarbon Ages From Snipe and Swan Key, FL

In 2016, researchers collected cores of mangrove peat from two islands in the Florida Keys: Snipe Key (24.679°N, 81.653°W) and Swan Key (25.349N, 80.251W) (Fig. 1). This data release contains the radiocarbon ages and associated data for peat samples analyzed throughout the two cores. These data were used by Khan and others (in preparation) to reconstruct the millennial-scal
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St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center

Local Radiocarbon Reservoir Age (Delta-R) Variability from the Nearshore and Open-Ocean Environments of the Florida Keys Reef Tract During the Holocene and Associated U-Series and Radiocarbon Data

Holocene-aged corals from reef cores collected throughout the Florida Keys reef tract (FKRT; Fig. 1) were dated using a combination of U-series and radiocarbon techniques to quantify the millennial-scale variability in the local radiocarbon reservoir age (delta-R) of the shallow water environments of south Florida. delta-R provides a measure of the deviation of local radiocarbon concentrations of
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Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program, St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center

Radiometric Ages and Descriptive Data for Holocene Corals From Southeast Florida

This data release compiles descriptive information (location, water depth, etc.) and radiometric ages from corals collected through the Southeast Florida Continental Reef Tract (SFCRT; fig. 1). The database includes data from studies published between 1977 and 2015 as well as previously unpublished data. The samples were originally collected using coral-reef coring or other geologic sampling metho
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Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program, St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center

DNA Microsatellite Markers for Mustard Hill Coral (Porites astreoides) from the Florida Keys Reef Tract

This data release includes allele sizes of 11 previously published microsatellites for 39 individuals of Porites astreoides (mustard hill coral) collected in the spring of 2017 from four locations in the Florida Keys: Fowey Rocks, Crocker Reef, Sombrero Reef, and Pulaski Shoal. Additionally, this data release also contains the DNA concentration of the extracted DNA prior to PCR reactions for the s
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Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program, St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center

Experimental coral-growth data and time-series imagery for Acropora palmata in the Florida Keys, U.S.A.

The USGS Coral Reef Ecosystems Studies project (https://coastal.er.usgs.gov/crest/) provides science that helps resource managers tasked with the stewardship of coral reef resources. This data release contains data on coral-growth rates and time-series photographs taken of colonies of the elkhorn coral, Acropora palmata, grown at five sites on the Florida Keys reef tract from spring 2018 to autumn
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Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program, St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center

South Florida Holocene Coral Sea-level Database

Holocene-aged coral samples from the south Florida region were extensively characterized to create a new database of verified sea-level data (Stathakopoulos and others, in review). The samples were originally collected using coral-reef coring or other geologic sampling methods and were obtained by several different researchers from studies spanning the interval of 1977 to 2017. Many of these sampl
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Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program, St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center

The Absolute and Relative Composition of Holocene Reef Cores From the Florida Keys Reef Tract

This data release provides a summary of the absolute percent composition of all recovered material and relative percent composition of coral taxa in the Holocene-aged intervals of 61 coral-reef cores collected throughout the Florida Keys reef tract (FKRT) housed in the USGS Core Archive in St. Petersburg, FL. Estimated ages for distinct depths within each core are also provided; those ages were ei
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Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program, St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center

Experimental Data on Construction and Erosion of Orbicella Coral Reefs in the Florida Keys, U.S.A.

The USGS Coral Reef Ecosystems Studies project provides science that helps resource managers tasked with the stewardship of coral reef resources. This data release contains data on coral-growth rates for Orbicella sp. coral colonies grown at five sites on the Florida Keys reef tract from 2013 to 2015, survey data for census-based carbonate budgeting at Hen and Chickens Reef (Islamorada, Florida),
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Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program, St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center

Sr/Ca and Linear Extension Data for Five Modern O. faveolata Colonies from Dry Tortugas National Park, Florida, USA

Strontium/Calcium (Sr/Ca) ratios act as a proxy for sea surface temperature (SST) in the skeletons of aragonite producing organisms, such as massive corals. The Sr/Ca-SST proxy shows promise when applied to single Orbicella faveolata colonies in the Atlantic/Caribbean regions, but it is currently unknown how well the Sr/Ca-SST proxy performs between colonies of this species. It is necessary to und
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Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program, St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center

Descriptive Core Logs, Core Photographs, Radiocarbon Ages, and Accretion Data from Holocene Reef Cores Collected Throughout the Florida Keys Reef Tract

The USGS core archive (Reich and others, 2009; USGS Core Archive) houses an extensive collection of coral-reef cores that USGS researchers have collected from throughout the Florida Keys reef tract (FKRT; fig. 1). USGS scientists have compiled all available data on the 71 core records that recovered Holocene reef framework, including radiometric ages (radiocarbon and U-series), data on reef develo
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Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program, St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center
Three USGS scientists sit on the back of a research vessel and prepare for a dive. link
Three USGS scientists sit on the back of a research vessel and prepare for a dive. link
Two divers float near coral reef with measuring tools to survey marine life
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Three USGS scientists sit on the back of a research vessel and prepare for a dive.
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a scale balancing coral carbonate production, and bioerosion link
a scale balancing coral carbonate production, and bioerosion
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Scuba divers underwater on sea floor working with equipment. link
Plot showing reef growth over time, peaking 7,000 years ago, declining in recent past, and potential increase in future
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Scuba divers underwater on sea floor working with equipment. link
several branching corals among a relatively flat reef area
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A scientist drives a 20 foot long aluminum tube into a coral reef to collect a coral core.
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A diver operates an underwater coral core drill, drilling into a coral reef.
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Climate-modulated range expansion of reef-building coral communities off southeast Florida during the late Holocene

The Holocene reefs off southeast Florida provide unique insights into the biogeographical and ecological response of western Atlantic coral reefs to past climate change that can be used to evaluate future climate impacts. However, previous studies have focused on millennial-scale change during the stable mid-Holocene, making it difficult to make inferences about the impact of shorter-term variabil
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St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center

Relative sea-level change in South Florida during the past ~5000 years

A paucity of detailed relative sea-level (RSL) reconstructions from low latitudes hinders efforts to understand the global, regional, and local processes that cause RSL change. We reconstruct RSL change during the past ~5 ka using cores of mangrove peat at two sites (Snipe Key and Swan Key) in the Florida Keys. Remote sensing and field surveys established the relationship between peat-forming mang
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Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program, St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center

Millennia-old coral holobiont DNA provides insight into future adaptive trajectories

Ancient DNA (aDNA) has been applied to evolutionary questions across a wide variety of taxa. Here, for the first time, we leverage aDNA from millennia-old fossil coral fragments to gain new insights into a rapidly declining western Atlantic reef ecosystem. We sampled four Acropora palmata fragments (dated 4215 BCE - 1099 CE) obtained from two Florida Keys reef cores. From these samples, we establi
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St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center

Documenting the multiple facets of a subsiding landscape from coastal cities and wetlands to the continental shelf

Land subsidence is a settling, sinking, or collapse of the land surface. In the southeastern United States, subsidence is frequently observed as sinkhole collapse in karst environments, wetland degradation and loss in coastal and other low-lying areas, and inundation of coastal urban communities. Human activities such as fluid extraction, mining, and overburden alteration can cause or exacerbate s
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Natural Hazards, Water Resources, Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program, Caribbean-Florida Water Science Center (CFWSC), Lower Mississippi-Gulf Water Science Center, Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana Water Science Center, South Atlantic Water Science Center (SAWSC), St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center

The past, present, and future of coral reef growth in the Florida Keys

Coral-reef degradation is driving global-scale reductions in reef-building capacity and the ecological, geological, and socioeconomic functions it supports. The persistence of those essential functions will depend on whether coral-reef management is able to rebalance the competing processes of reef accretion and erosion. Here, we reconstructed census-based carbonate budgets of 46 reefs throughout
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Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program, St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center

Scale dependence of coral reef oases and their environmental correlates

Identifying relatively intact areas within ecosystems and determining the conditions favoring their existence is necessary for effective management in the context of widespread environmental degradation. In this study, we used 3766 surveys of randomly selected sites in the United States and U.S. Territories to identify the correlates of sites categorized as “oases” (defined as sites with relativel
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Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program, St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center

A statistical framework for integrating nonparametric proxy distributions into geological reconstructions of relative sea level

Robust, proxy-based reconstructions of relative sea-level (RSL) change are critical to distinguishing the processes that drive spatial and temporal sea-level variability. The relationships between individual proxies and RSL can be complex and are often poorly represented by traditional methods that assume Gaussian likelihood distributions. We develop a new statistical framework to estimate past RS
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Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program, St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center

Upwelling and the persistence of coral-reef frameworks in the eastern tropical Pacific

In an era of global change, the fate and form of reef habitats will depend on shifting assemblages of organisms and their responses to multiple stressors. Multiphyletic assemblages of calcifying and bioeroding species contribute to a dynamic balance between constructive and erosive processes, and reef-framework growth occurs only when calcium-carbonate deposition exceeds erosion. Each contributing
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Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program, St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center

Genetic structure and diversity of the mustard hill coral Porites astreoides along the Florida Keys reef tract

Increases in local and global stressors have led to major declines in coral populations throughout the western Atlantic. While abundances of other species have declined, however, the relative abundance of the mustard hill coral, Porites astreoides, has increased. Porites astreoides is relatively resilient to some stressors, and because of its mixed reproductive strategies, its populations often re
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Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program, St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center

Climate and the latitudinal limits of subtropical reef development

Climate plays a central role in coral-reef development, especially in marginal environments. The high-latitude reefs of southeast Florida are currently non-accreting, relict systems with low coral cover. This region also did not support the extensive Late Pleistocene reef development observed in many other locations around the world; however, there is evidence of significant reef building in south
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Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program, St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center

Online-coupling of widely-ranged timescales to model coral reef development

The increasing pressure on Earth's ecosystems due to climate change is becoming more and more evident and the impacts of climate change are especially visible on coral reefs. Understanding how climate change interacts with the physical environment of reefs to impact coral growth and reef development is critically important to predicting the persistence of reefs into the future. In this study, a bi
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Natural Hazards, Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program, Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center, St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center

Reestablishing a stepping-stone population of the threatened elkhorn coral Acropora palmata to aid regional recovery

Recovery of the elkhorn coral Acropora palmata is critical to reversing coral reef ecosystem collapse in the western Atlantic, but the species is severely threatened. To gauge potential for the species’ restoration in Florida, USA, we conducted an assisted migration experiment where 50 coral fragments of 5 nursery-raised genetic strains (genets) from the upper Florida Keys were moved to 5 sites ac
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Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program, St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center

Non-USGS Publications**

Toth, L.T., I.G. Macintyre, and R.B. Aronson, 2017, Holocene reef development in the Tropical Eastern Pacific. In Glynn, P.W., D.P. Manzello, and I.C. Enochs (eds). Coral Reefs of the Eastern Pacific: Persistence and Loss in a Dynamic Environment. Springer-Verlag, New York. doi: 10.1007/978-94-017-7499-4_6.
Toth, L.T., R.B. Aronson, S.R. Smith, T.J.T. Murdoch, J.C. Ogden, W.F. Precht, and R. van Woesik, 2014, Do no-take reserves benefit corals? 14 years of stasis and change on Florida’s reefs. Coral Reefs 33:565–577, doi: 10.1007/s00338-014-1158-x.
Smith, T. B., Glynn, P. W., Maté, J. L., Toth, L. T. and Gyory, J., 2014, A depth refugium from catastrophic coral bleaching prevents regional extinction. Ecology, 95: 1663-1673. doi:10.1890/13-0468.1.
Staaterman, E.R., Z. Reichenbach, A. Bhandiwad, P. Gravinese, P. Moeller, A. Shantz, D.S. Shiffman, L.T. Toth, and A. Warneke, A.J. Gallagher, 2014, Lights, camera, science: The growing popularity of film festivals at scientific meetings. Ideas in Ecology and Evolution 7:11–16.
Aronson, R. B., Precht, W. F., Macintyre, I. G. and Toth, L. T., 2012, Catastrophe and the life span of coral reefs. Ecology, 93: 303-313, doi:10.1890/11-1037.1. doi:10.1126/science.1221168.
Toth, L.T., R.B. Aronson, S.V. Vollmer, J.W. Hobbs, D. Urrego, H. Cheng, I.C. Enochs, D.J. Combosch, R. van Woesik, and I.G. Macintyre, 2012, ENSO drove 2500-year collapse of eastern Pacific coral reefs. Science 337:81–84.
Enochs IC, Toth LT, Brandtneris VW, Afflerbach JC, Manzello DP, 2011, Environmental determinants of motile cryptofauna on an eastern Pacific coral reef. Mar Ecol Prog Ser 438:105-118. doi:10.3354/meps09259.

**Disclaimer: The views expressed in Non-USGS publications are those of the author and do not represent the views of the USGS, Department of the Interior, or the U.S. Government.

Keys Carbonate Budget Calculations and Analysis

The code 'Keys Carbonate Budget Calculations', written in R (v.4.0.4; https://www.R-project.org/), uses benthic coral-reef survey data and fish survey data to calculate coral-reef carbonate budgets following the ReefBudget v2 methodology (http://geography.exeter.ac.uk/reefbudget/; Perry and Lange, 2019). The carbonate budgets include estimates (means +/- standard errors) of gross carbonate product
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St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center
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Climate change will continue preventing coral reef growth in subtropics

Based on new research, USGS scientists predict future climate change will continue to suppress coral reef growth in the subtropics.

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New USGS study suggests that high-latitude environments are unlikely to support coral reef growth as the climate warms

Researcher Lauren T. Toth (Research Physical Scientist) of the St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center (SPCMSC) led a study published this...

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USGS Researchers Travel to Florida Keys to Conduct Reef Bioerosion Surveys

Staff from the St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center will collect measurements from long-term coral-reef monitoring sites in the Florida...

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Oceanographer Lauren Toth publishes lesson plan to teach how climate influences coral growth

Research Oceanographer Lauren Toth from the St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center co-authored a lesson plan published in Oceanography to...

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USGS oceanographer featured in a comic about corals and marine protected areas

USGS researcher Lauren Toth was recently featured in an informative cartoon about the stressors imposed on corals even within marine protected areas...

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New manuscript shows that warming has reversed long-standing environmental gradients on eastern Pacific coral reefs

A recent manuscript published by Research Oceanographer Lauren Toth with academic collaborators suggest that ocean warming is shifting which...

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New manuscript shows that internal wave cooling may provide global-scale refuge from coral bleaching

Lauren Toth (Research Oceanographer, SPCMSC) published a manuscript this week with academic collaborators showing that the cooling provided to many...

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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...

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New USGS manuscript documents unprecedented shift in coral species composition of Florida’s reefs

Lauren Toth (Research Oceanographer, SPCMSC), Ilsa Kuffner (Research Marine Biologist, SPCMSC), and Anastasios Stathakopoulos (Oceanographer) led a...

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New paper published on Florida Keys coral reef construction and erosion

A team of four scientists from St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center and collaborators from NOAA and Florida Institute of Technology...

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Coral-reef research featured in Science Magazine news article

A news feature published last week in Science Magazine highlights research by SPCMSC scientists into the problem of reef erosion in the Florida Keys.

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USGS Research Oceanographer receives international award

Lauren Toth (Research Oceanographer, SPCMSC) was awarded the International Coral Reef Society’s Young Scientist award in recognition of an exceptional...

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