The total area of coral reefs
Mark.Spalding at wcmc.org.uk
Mark.Spalding at wcmc.org.uk
Tue Oct 24 17:33:45 UTC 1995
As a result of its ongoing reef mapping work, which, as you may know, is
linked to the ReefBase database, the World Conservation Monitoring Centre has
the most comprehensive global digital reef map in the world and one thing
we're very keen to do is re-calculate the total area of coral reefs in the
world. Work is currently underway preparing preliminary figures which should
be published in a paper on marine biodiversity to be given at the 2nd
Conference of the Parties for the Convention on Biological Diversity. It is
hoped to provide better figures for the Coral Reef Symposium in Panama.
Interestingly it looks as though the figures being generated may be
considerably smaller than those given by Smith (1978, total global area -
600,000 sq km). If this is indeed the case, it is not entirely surprising
given the nature of the maps - Smith and others have tended to focus on areas
of reefal shelf, whereas the source maps used at WCMC are largely based on
reefs visible from the surface. I would be very interested to know your
comments on this, and also to track down any national or even sub-national
projects which have accurately calculated reef areas.
Part of this problem is the old one of "what is a coral reef?" and the
definition may have to vary depending on whether you are interested in reefs
for fisheries, tourism, productivity, biodiversity conservation or
calculation of carbon budgets.
Yours
Mark D. Spalding E-mail: mark.spalding at wcmc.org.uk
World Conservation Monitoring Centre
219 Huntingdon Rd
Cambridge, CB3 0DL Fax: +44 1223 277136
United Kingdom Tel: +44 1223 277314
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