http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/no-time-to-lose-scientists-eye-a-blueprint-to-save-the-great-barrier-reef-20170531-gwh7q8.html
The world's corals, including the Great Barrier Reef, can be saved but only with concerted efforts to coordinate management, recalibrate research and enact steep curbs to carbon emissions, scientists say.
In a paper published on Thursday in the journal Nature, (see
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v546/n7656/full/nature22901.html ) researchers led by Terry Hughes from James Cook University argue a narrowing window remains to preserve what's left of the world's reefs that have already been altered significantly over the past three decades.
The urgency is driven in part by unprecedented bleaching from marine heatwaves that have triggered the death of about 50 per cent of the Great Barrier Reef's corals in the past two summers alone.
The impacts have come even though tropical waters have warmed by about 0.57 degrees between 1880 and 2015, well shy of the average global temperature increase of 0.88 degrees. Assuming nations fulfil their Paris climate summit pledges to keep warming to well below 2 degrees, reefs "will be able to secure a future," Professor Hughes said.
"There's really no time to lose and the further beyond those [Paris] targets we go, the worse it will be for reefs," he said.
"Biodiversity is not what needs to be preserved," Professor Hughes said. "It's the function of the reef and its capacity to continue to be useful to people, particularly those in poor, developing countries."
Efforts in Australia had focussed largely on local issues, such as culling coral-munching crown-of-thorns starfish and improving water quality of nearby rivers.
Such spending has to continue because "a dead coral can't survive climate change," Stephen Palumbi, director of Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station, said.
