A group of scientists from Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Researach (ZMT), the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ) and MARUM – Center for Marine Environmental Sciences went to Curacao to gather data on the modern and fossil reefs surrounding the island. Their expedition will last from August 23rd until September 3rd, and they will use state-of-the-art approaches to understand how reefs have respon-ded and will respond to warmer climates and higher sea levels. In parallel, they will also test low-cost instruments (such as portable sonars and drones) to develop simple (and fun) methods to gather high-resolution 3D data of nearshore ecosystems.
The research team as a twofold goal. First, they are set out to acquire high-resolution data on coral reefs to understand their functioning today and in the past, with the hope of using this knowledge as a key to understand future changes. Second, they aim to develop a setup to generate reproducible nearshore data that can be used not only by scientists but also by citizens at large, e.g. elementary school pupils.
You can follow the expedition and many others on our blog pages: https://www.leibniz-zmt.de/de/forschung/expeditionen.html
You can follow the expedition and many others on our blog pages: https://www.leibniz-zmt.de/de/forschung/expeditionen.html