However, this unique portion of the Red Sea’s reef will only survive and flourish if serious regional environmental challenges are addressed. The Gulf of Aqaba could potentially be one of the planet’s largest marine refuges from climate change. This uniquely resilient reef employs biological mechanisms which are likely to be important for coral survival as the planet’s oceans warm. They withstand water temperature anomalies that cause severe bleaching or mortality in most hard corals elsewhere. The scleractinian corals in the Gulf have an unusually high tolerance for the rapidly warming seawater in the region. The Red Sea’s reef ecosystem is one of the longest continuous living reefs in the world, and its northernmost portion extends into the Gulf of Aqaba. However, one coral reef ecosystem seems to be more resilient to rising sea temperatures than most others. It is estimated that 70–90 percent of all reefs will be severely degraded by mid-century even if the 1.5☌ goal of the Paris Climate Agreement is achieved. Rapid ocean warming due to climate change poses a serious risk to the survival of coral reefs. 17The Mina & Everard Goodman Faculty of Life Sciences, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel.16Israel Nature and Parks Authority, Jerusalem, Israel.15Department of Biology, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany.14Ambassador of Switzerland in Israel, Tel Aviv, Israel.13Department of Biology, Eberly College of Science, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, United States.12Center for Advanced Surface Analysis, Institute of Earth Sciences, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland.11Laboratory for Biological Geochemistry, School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland.Wise Faculty of Life Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel 9Global Change Institute, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD, Australia.8Middle East Children’s Institute, Locust Valley, NY, United States.7Interuniversity Institute for Marine Sciences, Eilat, Israel.6Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel.5Department of Biological Sciences, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA, United States.4Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interface, Potsdam, Germany.3Marine Science Station, University of Jordan, Aqaba, Jordan.2College of Global Public Health, New York University, New York, NY, United States.1School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, United States.Voolstra 15 Assaf Zvuloni 16 Maoz Fine 7,17 Osman 13† Jean-Daniel Ruch 14 Yonathan Shaked 7 Christian R. Grace 8 Ove Hoegh-Guldberg 9 Yossi Loya 10 Anders Meibom 11,12 Eslam O.

Additional images taken by astronauts and cosmonauts can be viewed at the NASA/JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth.Karine Kleinhaus 1,2* Ali Al-Sawalmih 3,4 Daniel J. The International Space Station Program supports the laboratory to help astronauts take pictures of Earth that will be of the greatest value to scientists and the public, and to make those images freely available on the Internet. Such a complex pattern of reefs may translate into greater ecosystem diversity because of the wide variety of local reef environments.Īstronaut photograph ISS009-E-23808 was acquired September 20, 2004, with a Kodak 760C digital camera with an 800 mm lens, and is provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations experiment and the Image Science & Analysis Group, Johnson Space Center. Deeper water channels (darker blue) define the boundaries for individual reefs within the greater barrier reef system. Different parts of the reef structure show up as variable shades of light blue. Farther offshore grows a larger, more complicated barrier reef structure. This astronaut photograph illustrates the intricate morphology of the reef system located along the coast between Port Sudan to the northwest and the Tokar River delta to the southeast.Ĭlose to shore, fringing reefs border the coastline. In the Red Sea, fringing reefs form on shallow shelves of less than 50 meters depth along the coastline. (In addition to its commonly used meaning, precipitation can also describe how something dissolved in a solution becomes “undissolved” through chemical or biological processes.) Massive reef structures are built over thousands of years of succeeding generations of coral. Reefs are formed primarily from precipitation of calcium carbonate by corals. The Sudanese coast of the Red Sea is a well-known destination for diving due to clear water and abundance of coral reefs (or shia’ab in Arabic).

Red sea coral reef