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Coral Reef Priorities
J. 'Charlie' Veron's
lifetime of research in multiple fields of reef science around the
globe has made him one of the best-known marine scientists. Until
recently, his focus has been on three fundamental questions about
corals: what are they?, where are they?, why? – the
traditional sciences of taxonomy, biogeography and palaeontology.
These questions have now been overtaken by a fourth – when
and how? When and how are the predicted impacts of climate change
going to seriously affect coral reefs? This critical question took
him many years to research, demanding that disparate paths of science
be followed to their ultimate conclusions, then combined into a
single synthesis. This undertaking revealed the big picture for
coral reefs, showing only too clearly how critical the plight of
reefs is today. This was the motivation behind Veron's new book,
A Reef in Time: The Great Barrier Reef from Beginning to End.
Coral reefs as we know
them have been in existence for hundreds of millions of years, through
times of spectacular growth and dramatic extinctions. Being at the
whim of environmental upheavals, reefs are Nature's historians.
In this role they reveal a history that is about to take a turn
so immediate that it will be witnessed in a single lifetime.
Anthropogenic carbon dioxide is increasing
so abruptly that it is now causing fatal mass bleaching of corals
worldwide and is set to trigger global mass extinctions through
ocean acidification.
The rate at which this is happening
has no precedent in all Earth history. Coral reef and climate
science combine to reveal a path towards the next great mass extinction,
a catastrophe for all life, terrestrial as well as marine.
Conserving what we have as well as we can has become the greatest
of all challenges to face humanity. This website is Veron's contribution
towards this formidable task.
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Veron's publications accessed through this website:
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