Dr Tara Clark of The University of Queensland
She said the area in the central region of the Great Barrier Reef warranted close monitoring to avoid irreversible changes in ecosystem health.
"Hard coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef is on a trajectory of decline," Dr Clark said.
"Yet, little is known about past coral mortality before long-term monitoring began around the 1980s to give us a long-term picture of what has happened since European colonisation of the coast."
Dr Clark said the limited baseline information of ecological dynamics before the 1980s made it difficult to understand recent ecosystem trends.
"Our study demonstrates the use of high-resolution uranium-thorium dating, modern and palaeoecological techniques to improve our understanding of coral mortality and recovery dynamics over much broader time scales," she said.
"At a regional scale we found a loss of resilience in ecologically important branching Acropora corals - formerly dominant key framework builders - with recovery severely lagging behind predictions."
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-09-coral-loss-palm-islands-mass.html#jCp
