Climate Change Reduces Coral Reefs' Ability to Protect Coasts

Coral reefs, under pressure from climate change and direct human activity, may have a reduced ability to protect tropical islands against wave attack, erosion and salinization of drinking water resources, which help to sustain life on those islands.  A new paper gives guidance to coastal managers to assess how climate change will affect a coral reef's ability to mitigate coastal hazards.

About 30 million people are dependent on the protection by coral reefs as they live on low-lying coral islands and atolls.  At present, some of these islands experience flooding due to wave events a few times per decade.  It is expected that this rate of flooding will increase due to sea level rise and coral reef decay, as the remaining dead corals are generally smoother in structure, and do less to dissipate wave energy.  Loss of coral cover not only causes increased shoreline erosion but also affects the sparse drinking water resources on these islands, which may eventually make these islands uninhabitable.

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