226 Results Found

To solve resource issues on coral reef islands, an understanding of the water cycle is essential. Water resource management is intricately linked to diverse occupational industries and coral reef ecosystems on these islands. To effectively promote su...

The spatial morphology of coral islands and reefs is a fundamental physical and ecological attribute that reflects the developmental and evolutionary processes of coral islands and reefs. The spatial morphology of coral islands and reefs in the South...

Coral reef bleaching events have become more frequent all over the world and pose a serious threat to coral reef ecosystems. Therefore, there is an urgent need for better detection of coral reef bleaching in a time- and cost-saving manner. In recent...

An extensive late Aeronian patch reef swarm outcrops for 60–70 km on Anticosti Island, eastern Canada, located in the inner to mid-shelf area of a prominent tropical carbonate platform of southeastern Laurentia, at 20°–25° S paleolatitude of the sout...

Microbes in coral reef sediments are thought to play an important role in organic matter remineralization and nutrient recycling. Microbial communities also reflect the environmental conditions, such as nutrient status, of an ecosystem. This study in...

Despite the abundance of research on coral reef change detection, few studies have been conducted to assess the spatial generalization principles of a live coral cover classifier trained using remote sensing data from multiple locations. The aim of t...

The architectural complexity of coral-reef habitat plays an important role in determining the assemblage structure of reef fish. We investigated associations between the reef habitats and fish assemblages in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands (NWHI) u...

Coral islands and reefs are formed by the cementation of the remains of shallow water reef-building coral polyps and other reef dwelling organisms in tropical oceans. They can be divided into coral islands, coral sandbanks, coral reefs, and coral sho...

Satellite monitoring of thermal stress on coral reefs has become an essential component of reef management practice around the world. A recent development by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Coral Reef Watch (NOAA CRW) progr...

This study was an evaluation of the spectral signature generalization properties of coral across four remote Pacific Ocean reefs. The sites under consideration have not been the subject of previous studies for coral classification using remote sensin...

The amount of live and dead coral is related to recruitment, but differentiating them by remote sensing techniques is difficult. We measured change in the amount of live, bleached, and recently (<6 months) dead coral cover (CCA6) for an island arc...

A unique shift in benthic community composition, where scleractinian corals are replaced by coralline algae, has been observed on coral reefs in Guam in the western Pacific. Guam’s reefs have been subjected to intense fishing pressure and impai...

Yongle Atoll was the largest atoll in the Xisha Islands of the South China Sea, and it was a coral reef ecosystem with important ecological and economic values. In order to better protect and manage the coral reef fish resources in Yongle Atoll, we a...

Coral reefs are important as they can help to maintain ecological balance, biological resources, and species diversity on earth. However, they are globally threatened by human activities and climate change. As live coral cover (LCC) is regarded as an...

Reef islands are some of the most highly sensitive landforms to the impacts of future environmental change. Previous assessments of island morphodynamics primarily relied on historical aerial and satellite imagery. These approaches limit analysis to...

Recently, the Census of Marine Life has explored methods to assess coral reef diversity by combining standardized sampling (to permit comparison across sites) with molecular techniques (to make rapid counts of species possible). To date, this approac...

The Alburquerque Cay Islands belong to a group of western Caribbean atolls, with a barrier reef of coral that is more than 8 km in diameter. An understanding of the reef ocean dynamics and its direct relationship to the functioning of the ecosystem i...

The high importance of bathymetric character for many processes on reefs means that high-resolution bathymetric models are commonly needed by marine scientists and coastal managers. Empirical and optimisation methods provide two approaches for derivi...

The elemental composition of freshwater and saltwater samples around the South Pacific island of Upolu, Samoa has been investigated together with other indicators of water quality. Up to 69 elements from Li (3) to U (92) are measured in each sample,...

Global coral reef ecosystems face various levels of disturbance pressure. Understanding the depth-structured variation in coral reef fish communities can help us to better grasp and predict the adaptive changes of the ecosystem under different stress...

Hundreds of fish species are harvested in coral-reef fisheries in the Indo-Pacific region using a variety of fishing gears. This diversity makes the economics, ecology, and management of reef-associated fisheries inherently complex. However, across i...

The climate crisis poses a grave threat to numerous small island developing states (SIDS), intensifying risks from extreme weather events and sea level rise (SLR). This vulnerability heightens the dangers of coastal erosion, chronic water quality deg...

Subtropical coral reefs such as the lagoonal reefs of Norfolk Island in the remote South Pacific are vastly understudied, with many benthic species unrecorded in the scientific literature. Here we report on ascidian populations from 2021 to 2023 at N...

This study aims to understand the dynamic changes in the coral reef habitats of Derawan Island over two decades (2003, 2011, and 2021) using advanced machine learning classification techniques. The motivation stems from the urgent need for accurate,...

Coral reefs around Sri Lanka have coexisted with human communities for thousands of years and are a continual source of food, economic productivity, and tourism. Although these reef systems sustain nearby populations, little is known about the presen...

Coral reef ecosystems are home to diverse marine flora and fauna. However, these ecosystems are threatened by an array of environmental and anthropogenic factors. Here, we investigated coral reef diversity, structure, and health status, and identifie...

This study evaluated the status of coral communities at the fringing reefs in the northern South China Sea, and their potential role in maintaining nearby coastline stability of northeastern Hainan Island (Puqian Bay, Hainan Bay). Thirty-nine coral s...

The ability of different marine species to use acoustic cues to locate reefs is known, but the maximal propagation distance of coral reef sounds is still unknown. Using drifting antennas (made of a floater and an autonomous recorder connected to a hy...

Submarine groundwater discharge (SGD) is a recognized contributor to the hydrological and biogeochemical functioning of coral reef ecosystems located along coastlines. However, the distribution, size, and thermal properties of SGD remain poorly under...

This study characterizes the submerged geomorphology around Annobón, São Tomé, and Príncipe Islands, and the De Santarém–Escobar seamount in the Cameroon Volcanic Line or CVL (Gulf of Guinea, West Africa) thro...

This study utilized 50 laboratory experiments to document the evolution of coral beaches under varying regular wave conditions, including five distinct wave periods and ten wave heights. Both the type of equilibrium beach and the shape of sand bars w...

We present a new method for the detection of coral bleaching using satellite time-series data. While the detection of coral bleaching from satellite imagery is difficult due to the low signal-to-noise ratio of benthic reflectance, we overcame this di...

The Special Issue (SI) on “Remote Sensing in Coastal Environments” presents a wide range of articles focusing on a variety of remote sensing models and techniques to address coastal issues and processes ranging for wetlands and water quality to coral...

In order to better understand the role of coral reefs around an isolated island in mitigating tsunami hazards, this study performed a horizontally two-dimensional (2DH) numerical study of tsunami-like solitary wave propagation and run-up around an id...

Remote sensing monitoring and geomorphologic change analysis of coral reefs are of great practical significance for the ecological protection and sustainable development of coral reef area resources. A WBMD scheme is proposed to better extract coral...

Maldivian coral reefs have been experiencing significant degradation due to a combination of global climate change and local anthropogenic pressures. To enforce the conservation of coral reefs worldwide, coral restoration is becoming a popular tool t...

Corals do not typically thrive in mangrove environments. However, corals are growing on and near the prop roots of red mangrove trees in Hurricane Hole, an area within the Virgin Islands Coral Reef National Monument under the protection of the US Nat...

Anaglyphs produced using a digital elevation model (DEM) are effective to identify the characteristic tectono–geomorphic features. The objective of this study is to reinvestigate the tectonic geomorphology and to present novel tectonic maps of...

Wind-wave contributions to tropical cyclone (TC)-induced extreme sea levels are known to be significant in areas with narrow littoral zones, particularly at oceanic islands. Despite this, little information exists in many of these locations to assess...

Reef-building corals show a marked decrease in total species richness from the tropics to high latitude regions. Several hypotheses have been proposed to account for this pattern in the context of abiotic and biotic factors, including temperature thr...

Dense aggregations of serpulid worms were encountered in the Daymaniyat Islands (Gulf of Oman) from 10 to 20 m depth, over the period January–March, 2021. The species responsible for these aggregations belongs to the Filograna/Salmacina-complex...

To achieve coral reef resilience under Agenda 2030, island governments need to institutionalise a competent blue workforce to expand their reef resilience initiatives across economic organisations and industries. The ability of island governments to...

Despite being among the most valuable ecosystems on Earth, coral reefs face ongoing threats that could negatively impact the human populations who depend on them. The National Coral Reef Monitoring Program (NCRMP) collects and monitors data on variou...

Global warming and sea-level rise (SLR) induced by rising atmospheric CO₂ concentrations can cause coral bleaching, death, and submergence of the world’s coral reefs. Adopting the GIS and RS methods, we modeled how these two stressors combine to infl...

While benthic characteristics of coral reef habitats are a major driver of the structure of coral reef fish assemblages, non-reef habitats adjacent to coral reefs (e.g., mangroves, seagrass beds, and macroalgal beds) can affect reef fish assemblages....

A lime–sand island–reef formation has a dual structure consisting of an overlying loose or weakly consolidated coral sand (CS) layer and an underlying reef limestone layer. The coral sand layer is the sole carrier of the underground fresh...

Serranilla is a protected island of the Seaflower Biosphere Reserve, far from dense human population. These characteristics could help sustain structurally complex coral reefs, often associated with higher biodiversity, abundance, and biomass of reef...

Limited information is available on the bleaching susceptibility of coral species that dominate high latitude reefs along the eastern seaboard of Australia. The main aims of this study were to: (i) monitor coral health and spatial patterns of coral b...

Since parrotfish in coral reefs are involved in key ecological processes, this study compiled species presence-absence data across 51 sites in the South China Sea to identify and explore the distribution and relationship between species and large-sca...

Coral cover worldwide has been declining due to heat stress caused by climate change. Here we report the impacts of the 2015–2016 El Niño mass coral bleaching event on the coral cover of reefs located on central and northern atolls of the Maldives. W...