Corals and Climate Change in the Marshall Islands

What does the future hold for Marshall Islands corals? Using clues from the past, we will predict how future climate change will affect these coral reefs, which have historically escaped dramatic heat events.

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Science

Corals and Climate Change

This project is part of the #SciFund Challenge!

Have you ever seen a coral reef, in person, in video, or in photos? If you have, you know why I want them to exist in the future: they are beautiful, they are magical, and they are also extremely important to the millions of people and billions of animals that rely on them to provide food, shelter, and other life-supporting services.

Climate change is bad for corals. Excess heat causes them to lose their symbiotic algae, called “bleaching,” which can kill the corals. When corals die, coral reefs fall apart. Since humans appear hell-bent on continuing to push the climate towards a warmer state, we are on a mission to figure out how to help keep the remaining corals alive.

Our questions include:

  • What causes some corals to survive excessively warm temperature events, and what causes others to die?
  • Where in the world do corals have the best chance of survival with no intervention?
  • What can we do to intervene and help corals survive?

Our previous work in the Gilbert Islands of the central Pacific island nation of Kiribati (“Kiribahss”) suggests that reefs that are pre-exposed to heat stress events are better able to withstand additional heat stress in the future. We want to further investigate this question in the Marshall Islands—a location that has not historically experienced major heat stress events, but has had reports of recent coral bleaching.

Are the corals in the Marshall Islands “naïve” and therefore more likely to bleach and die in the future, or is their relatively mild climate a boon to their survival?

These are the questions we will address by conducting reef surveys, investigating differences in the standing live and dead coral community, and collecting core samples from large, old corals. The core samples will reveal annual growth rings (just like trees), which we can read to evaluate how these corals reacted to past heat stress events, in order to predict the future.

We estimate the entire field expedition to cost $15k, and are applying for funding from other sources as well; but the more we raise towards this goal through Rockethub, the better!

Thank you for considering supporting this project. In addition to furthering scientific knowledge and helping to protect the future of coral reefs, your donation will contribute to keeping the dream of being a field researcher alive for a new mom.