Real-time satellite system to monitor global reef bleaching

Image above left: UQ-created reef habitat maps, with the superimposed blue colour representing coral bleaching. 

Credit: Allen Coral Atlas.

Image above right: bleached corals in Hawaii.

Credit: Greg Asner.

 

From University of Queensland

 

In a world first, a satellite-based global coral reef bleaching monitoring system will scan the Earth’s oceans for coral-killing bleaching events in real-time.

The Allen Coral Atlas project, an international research collaboration featuring University of Queensland scientists, are using unprecedented detailed habitat maps of all global coral reefs – over 230,000 of them – to detect reef bleaching anywhere in the world.

 

The Allen Coral Atlas Monitoring System, New Caledonia on April 26, 2021

 

Dr Chris Roelfsema, from UQ’s Remote Sensing Research Centre, said the digital atlas tool was desperately needed, given the state of the world’s coral reefs.

“The current prognosis for the world’s coral reefs is bleak,” Dr Roelfsema said.

“With ever-warming, more polluted and acidic oceans, models predict that 70 per cent to 90 per cent of coral reefs will be lost by 2050.

“Until now, there hasn’t been a global system in place to monitor coral reefs under the stresses that may lead to their deaths.

“The Atlas team have now created this incredible tool, which monitors the global health of coral reefs and bringing new hope to support conservation efforts.

“The Allen Coral Atlas will allow us to offer critically important information to scientists, decision and policymakers, something that’s urgently needed for rapid response and conservation.”

Previously, only disparate data sets and maps that were available to scientists and policymakers.

 

The Allen Coral Atlas allows anyone with internet access to monitor and download data on every major reef globally at never-before-seen detail, across time.

Satellites detect variations in reef brightness by using high-resolution satellite imagery powered by an advanced algorithm indicating whether reefs are under stress or resilient to marine heatwaves.

“This monitoring capability will help us to see, where and to what extent coral bleaching is likely to be occurring as well as where it isn’t bleaching so we can identify resilient reefs,” Dr Roelfsema said.
“The platform can observe where corals are bleaching throughout the world, ranging from no bleaching to severe.
“Once we know where this is happening, governments and NGOs on the ground can swoop in to take action sooner, rather than later.”

 

The project began in 2018, when a new generation of cube satellites operated by Planet, allowed for four-metre-per-pixel mosaic image of the world’s coral reefs to be assembled.

Satellite data was then cleaned up via the Carnegie Institution - Asner Lab, before UQ scientists used the data to create the first global map that represent coral and algae, seagrass, sand, rubble and rock.
“This is just the first global version of our monitoring system, with the partnership intending to improve and expand it to include a broader range of impacts on reefs such as land-sea pollutants and sediments,” Dr Roelfsema said.
“This first, truly global reef monitoring system is simply a drop in the bucket for what is to come.”

The Allen Coral Atlas, named for the late Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen, is funded by Vulcan Inc. and directed by Arizona State University, and was developed through a unique partnership between UQ, Arizona State University, National Geographic Society, Planet, and Vulcan.

Links :

• The Guardian : Scientists launch tool to detect bleaching of coral reefs in near real time
• Discover : How Volunteers Are Helping Keep Coral Reefs Alive
• Paul Allen Foundation : Helping corals survive the climate crisis 

Boom in ships that fly ‘fake’ flags and trash the environment

Workers toil to dismantle huge vessels at a ship-breaking yard in Bangladesh.

Credit: Yousuf Tushar/LightRocket via Getty

From Nature by Quirin Schiermeier

The number of ships using a ‘flag of convenience’ loophole that allows them to be scrapped in a place with lax environmental regulations is skyrocketing.

Ships transport 90% of the world’s traded cargo, so are crucial to the global economy.

But when tankers and other large vessels are demolished, they generate huge amounts of marine pollution, particularly if it happens in countries where environmental regulations for ship-breaking yards are lax.

Research now shows1 that the number of vessels misleadingly registered to nations other than their true country of origin — called flags of convenience — has skyrocketed since 2002.

The practice allows ship owners from nations with strict environmental regulations to have their vessels dismantled cheaply — but often in a way that is very damaging to the environment.

Business owners in wealthy nations, including members of the European Union as well as the United States, South Korea and Japan, control the large majority of the world cargo and tanker fleet.

But an analysis of scrapping records from commercial maritime data providers reveals that between 2014 and 2018, 80% of these ships were demolished in just 3 nations, where shipyards are governed by weak environmental, labour and safety regulations — Bangladesh, India and Pakistan (see ‘Playing the system’).

Source: Z. Wan et al. Mar. Pol. 130, 104542 (2021)
Poor environmental regulation

The study reveals that the use of flags of convenience has become the default among business owners in the EU over the past few decades.

Strict EU regulations require all ships registered in EU countries to be recycled at yards approved by the European Commission, but when ships are flagged outside the EU, their owners can evade regulations.

Countries are responsible for enforcing international and regional safety and environmental rules on ships registered under their flags — but some flag-of-convenience nations are known not to do so. Between 2002 and 2019, the proportion of EU-nation-owned ships registered in low-income countries rose from 46% to 96%, the study finds.

By registering ships abroad, owners can also escape taxes and operate substandard vessels.

Between 2002 and 2019, the top flags of convenience shifted from Panama and Liberia to two small island countries, Comoros and Palau, which will issue flags for a fee, without proper regulations.

Failure of maritime rules

International treaties — including the 1992 Basel Convention to prevent transfer of hazardous waste from developed to less developed countries, and the 2009 Hong Kong Convention for the safe and environmentally sound recycling of ships — are woefully ineffective with regard to preventing environmental injustice, says study author Zheng Wan, a transport researcher at Shanghai Maritime University in China who led the analysis.

Ship-scrapping in low-income countries comes with fatal health risks and severe environmental pollution, including releases of mercury, lead, asbestos, ozone-depleting substances and pesticides into the soil and sea.

One study2 estimates that by 2027, almost 5,000 workers in ship-recycling yards in India will have died from mesothelioma, a malignant tumour caused by inhaling asbestos.

“Business practices are rendering many international treaties and regional regulations unenforceable because ‘flags of convenience’ nations tend to have little interest in regulation,” says Wan.

“In addition, workers’ health is always ignored by low-income nations that perform the ship-breaking.”

“It is immoral if ship owners in wealthy developed countries are circumventing international conventions and potentially exposing workers in low-income countries to serious harm,” adds John Cheerie, a workplace-health researcher at the Institute of Occupational Medicine in Edinburgh, UK.

“It is important for the international community to address this issue and eliminate loopholes,” he says.
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-01391-3

Cap Sizun, La Bretagne Sauvage

courtesy of Voiles & Voiliers

 

geolovalization with the GeoGarage platform (SHOM nautical raster chart)
 

This wonderful vintage map from 1922 received a digital facelift with added shaded relief data

Original map 

by Bartholomew, J. G. (John George), 1860-1920 / Publisher : TheTime

Added shaded relief to this vintage World Bathymetry Map (c.1922)

Threatened by rising sea levels, the Maldives is building a floating city

Inspired by nature.
Image: Maldives Floating City (gallery)

From WMO by Natalie Marchant

The waterfront residences will float on a flexible grid across a 200-hectare lagoon.
Such innovative developments could prove vital in helping atoll nations, such as the Maldives, fight the impact of climate change.
Dutch company is also testing the technology in the Netherlands.

The atoll nation of Maldives is creating an innovative floating city that mitigates the effects of climate change and stays on top of rising sea levels.

The Maldives Floating City is designed by Netherlands-based Dutch Docklands and will feature thousands of waterfront residences and services floating along a flexible, functional grid across a 200-hectare lagoon.

Such a development is particularly vital for countries such as Maldives – an archipelago of 25 low-lying coral atolls in the Indian Ocean that is also the lowest-lying nation in the world.

More than 80% of the country’s land area lies at less than one metre above sea level – meaning rising sea levels and coastal erosion pose a threat to its very existence.

Sustainable design

Developed with the Maldives government, the first-of-its kind “island city” will be based in a warm-water lagoon just 10 minutes by boat from the capital Male and its international airport.

Dutch Docklands worked with urban planning and architecture firm Waterstudio, which is developing floating social housing in the Netherlands, to create a water-based urban grid built to evolve with the changing needs of the country.

Maldives thrives on tourism and the same coral reefs that attract holiday makers also provide the inspiration for much of the development.

The hexagon-shaped floating segments are, in part, modelled on the distinctive geometry of local coral.

These are connected to a ring of barrier islands, which act as breakers below the water, thereby lessening the impact of lagoon waves and stabilizing structures on the surface.

“The Maldives Floating City does not require any land reclamation, therefore has a minimal impact on the coral reefs,” says Mohamed Nasheed, former president of the Maldives, speaker of parliament and Climate Vulnerable Forum Ambassador for Ambition.
“What’s more, giant new reefs will be grown to act as water breakers. Our adaptation to climate change mustn't destroy nature but work with it, as the Maldives Floating City proposes. In the Maldives, we cannot stop the waves, but we can rise with them.”

 

This floating city could help reduce climate change.
Image: Maldives Floating City (gallery)

Construction on the floating city is expected to start next year.
Image: Maldives Floating City (gallery)

Affordable homes

The islands’ seafaring past also influenced the design of the buildings, which will all be low-rise and face the sea.

A network of bridges, canals and docks will provide access across the various segments and connect shops, homes and services across the lagoon.

Construction is due to start in 2022 and the development will be completed in phases over the next five years – with a hospital and school eventually being built.

Renewable energy will power the city through a smart grid and homes will be priced from $250,000 in a bid to attract a wide range of buyers including local fishermen, who have called the area home for centuries.

Rising sea levels

In March, the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) warned that oceans were under threat like never before and emphasized the increasing risk of rising sea levels.

Around 40% of the global population live within 100 kilometres of the coast.

WMO Secretary-General Professor Petteri Taalas said there was an “urgent need” to protect communities from coastal hazards, such as waves, storm surge and sea level rise via multi-hazard warning systems and forecasting.

Atoll nations are even more at risk than other island-based countries, with the Maldives one of just a handful – alongside Kiribati, Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands in the Pacific – that have built societies on the coral-and-sand rims of sunken volcanoes.

So-called king tides – which can wash over parts of habitable land – and the storms that drive them are getting higher and more intense due to climate change.

Connecting communities for ocean resilience

The World Economic Forum, Friends of Ocean Action and the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for the Ocean will explore how to take bold action for a healthy, resilient and thriving seas during the Virtual Ocean Dialogues 2021 on 25-27 May.

The online event will focus on the vital importance of mainstreaming the ocean in global environment-focused forums and summits – from climate and biodiversity, to food and science.

Links : 

• WMO : The developing world must get ready to adapt its trade to climate change /  The world’s coastal cities are going under. Here’s how some are fighting back / These 11 sinking cities could disappear by 2100