25-02-05

Professor to Study Phuket Coral Reefs

This week the UHI North Highland College is celebrating the appointment of it’s first Visiting Professor. Barbara Brown, an Emeritus Professor in Tropical Marine Biology, will work with environmental scientists at the college’s Environmental Research Institute to investigate the effects of climate change on coral reefs.

Prof. Brown is internationally recognised for her work on coral reefs and is a current contributor to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and part of the World Bank Study Group on Coral Bleaching. On the appointment she commented, ‘I was honoured to be invited to be a Visiting Professor by the UHI Millemmium Institute and to be part of a vibrant and rapidly evolving research group at the Environmental Research Institute. I have collaborated with Dr. Stuart Gibb over the last seven years on the effects of climate change on coral reefs and look forward to some exciting research over the next few years with Stuart and his colleagues’.

Dr.Stuart Gibb, Director of the ERI said ‘Barbara is internationally renowned for her work on coral reefs. We are absolutely delighted with her dicision to join us and take this to be a reflection of our growing maturity and credibility as a research organisation’.

Over the last few decades coral reefs, renowned for their stunning beauty and extraordinary bio-diversity, have been under increasing threat due to rising sea temperatures induced by global warming. ‘Coral bleaching’ is an early warning sign of rising sea temperatures and indicates the corals are under stress. ‘Bleaching’ involves the corals losing their characteristic colours through demise of their symbiotic coloured algae. ‘Coral bleaching has repeatedly occurred around the world, with the latest major bleaching episode being in 1998 when many coral reefs in the Indian Ocean were severely damaged as a result.

The group’s studies will focus on the island of Phuket, on the west coast of Thailand, which took the full force of the recent Indian Ocean tsunami. While some reefs have been badly affected, others have shown little or no impact from the tsunami waves.

Prof. Brown is about to return to Phuket to survey the level of damage. Before departing she said, ‘Preliminary surveys suggest our study reefs remain intact while providing a buffer against which the strength of the waves was dissipated before hitting the shore. A sea defence function is a very important role of coral reefs and one which could be seriously affected by anticipated climate change’.