A coral reef in New Caledonia in March 2005. While not part of NASA’s planned CORAL mission, the reef is representative of a very diverse and productive reef ecosystem. Reef areas in Palau and the Great Barrier Reef that will be part of the CORAL study will have the same character. Coral reef scientists are concerned that coral-rich habitats like this one are disappearing due to the combined impacts of local human use and global change. If corals disappear, reefs will lose their major architect, and millions of other species will lose their habitat, impacting everything that humans hold valuable about reef ecosystems. The objective of CORAL is to determine, for a select group of reefs, just how much coral there is and then attempt to determine why. The reef pictured here is located at 22.3276 degrees South, 166.373 degrees East.
Credit: Eric Hochberg