A new US and Australian study - including research from
UQ's Professor John Pandolfi said the study used information from surprisingly accurate 18th century nautical charts and satellite data to understand coral loss over more than two centuries in the Florida Keys.
"We found that some reefs had completely disappeared," Professor Pandolfi said.
The study was led by Loren McClenachan, Assistant Professor at Colby College, in Waterville, Maine, USA.
Professor McClenachan said more than half of the coral reef habitat mapped in the 1770s was no longer there. In some areas, particularly near land, coral loss was closer to 90 per cent.
"We found near the shore, entire sections of reef are gone, but in contrast, most coral mapped further from land is still coral reef habitat today," she said.
This estimate of change over centuries added to modern observations of recent loss of living corals.
The marine scientists measured the loss of coral reef habitats across a large geographic area, while most studies look more closely at the loss of living coral from smaller sections of the reef.
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-09-eighteenth-century-nautical-reveal-coral.html#jCp
