cc: date: Wed, 27 Aug 2003 09:35:13 +1000 from: subject: RE: Barrier Reef icon project to: , , , Hi Nick, I like the social angle. The scientific angle has been done to some extent but I'm not aware of the angle you've suggested being done. Roger Jones has just been involved in a Reef study that received a fair degree of media coverage (see http://www.dar.csiro.au/news/2003/mr08.html for a summary, with a link to the report at the bottom). Most work on the Reef would be done by AIMS (Australian Institute of Marine Science - http://www.aims.gov.au/), James Cook University (http://www.jcu.edu.au/) and the Reef Cooperative Research Centre (http://www.reef.crc.org.au/) so it would be worth a quick look at their publications. Cheers, Simon. -----Original Message----- From: Nick Brooks [mailto:nick.brooks@uea.ac.uk] Sent: Tuesday, 26 August 2003 11:14 PM To: dust-health; Neil Adger; Torok, Simon (AR, Aspendale); Emma Tompkins Subject: Barrier Reef icon project Dear Mike and Neil (copied to Simon Torok and Emma Tompkins for feedback) In a meeting within the last few months Mike mentioned the idea of looking at the implications of climate change for what he termed "global icons", ie areas, regions and features that had a high profile in the public consciousness globally. One of these suggested icons was the Great Barrier Reef. I've just come back from Queensland, where I made two trips out to the reef, visiting 3 sites for snorkelling. All three sites were in a pretty poor condition, with some 80 percent of the coral being dead. On each trip I spoke to the people running the boat about this, and on one occasion was told that it was due to cyclone damage, and on the other was informed that the destruction was caused by crown of thorns starfish. Speaking to other tourists it became apparent that this sort of destruction is widespread - everyone who had dived or snorkelled before said they were either shocked or disappointed by the state of the reef. It also became apparent that there was always a local "reason" for the destruction - cyclones, starfish, fertilizers from the sugar cane plantations (even 40 - 70 km offshore). The person running the lodge where we stayed (who I believe used to be an environmental journalist) had a different explanation, putting the destruction down to bleaching resulting from anomalously hot summers. Of course damage from tourism could also be an explanation. While my visit and various conversations represent only a very superficial survey, they suggest a couple of testable hypotheses that could be turned into a research project: i) There is widespread systematic damage to the reef resulting principally from higher summer sea surface temperatures, combined in places with other hazards (in fact the former would make the coral more vulnerable to the latter). ii) A perception of an "unchanging" environment leads people to generate local explanations for coral loss based on transient phenomena, while not acknowledging the possibility of systematic damage from long-term climatic/environmental change. (i) could be tested by examining the spatial distribution of damage and its relationship with sea surface temperature anomalies, cyclone tracks, recorded pest and pollution events and other such factors (eg frequency of tourist visits). Sites exhibiting different levels of damage could be used as training sites for characterising damage using satellite imagery - for example using mixture modelling with Thematic Mapper imagery. (ii) would be a survey/questionnaire based study. Such a project could do a lot to raise awareness of threats to the reef from climate change (depending on the outcome of the research!) and of the climate change issue generally, particularly in Australia, but also around the world. The project would be reasonably straightforward to design, and would be a good interdisciplinary study, and could strengthen links between Tyndall and Australian institutes such as CSIRO. Simon - do you know if there is anything along these lines going on already? I'm sure there's been plenty done on the reef, and having just spoken to Emma it seems there is quite a lot of general reef literature out there. Not having any experience in this field it might be naïve of me to think I've come up with something original! If this is viable it could be another means of keeping me employed if someone wants to act as PI and develop it with me, or could be turned into a PhD project, or both - there is potentially a lot of work here. Your feedback is welcome. Nick -- Dr Nick Brooks School of Environmental Sciences University of East Anglia Norwich NR4 7TJ Tel: +44 1603 593904 Fax: +44 1603 593901 Email: nick.brooks@uea.ac.uk http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~e118/welcome.htm (personal site) http://www.tyndall.ac.uk (Tyndall Centre site) http://www.uea.ac.uk/sahara (Saharan Studies Programme) --