Past Tells A Lot About What Great Barrier Reef Faces Today 

Issues the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is facing today can be better understood by examining its past, research led by the University of Sydney shows.

Flooding of previous reef platforms 8,000 years ago led to a slowdown in growth of up to two thousand years, and reef communities that grew there were much less complex than those inhabiting the same areas of the reef today.

It took a further two to three thousand years for the current rich diversity we see in the reef areas to become established, but the Great Barrier Reef is now once again facing major problems.

Researchers from the University of Sydney’s School of Geosciences, the University of Granada and Queen’s University, Belfast, sampled 15 reef cores from the Southern Great Barrier Reef. The cores were radiocarbon dated to establish their ages. Species of reef corals were also identified to ascertain any coral community changes over the past eight thousand years.

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