NASA and scientists around the world join together to save the world's coral reefs, as NASA launched late last week a new initiative to collect data from coral reefs located from 23,000 feet above the surface of the planet.

Like Us on Facebook

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory will lead this campaign for three years, which is known as the Coral Reef Airborne Laboratory (CORAL) as scientists and researchers will use this program to determine the environmental forces that are affecting coral reefs around the world.

According to CORAL principal investigator, Eric Hochberg, this mission will be carried out as an airborne monitoring program to survey reefs located in the Pacific where its main goal is to gain new perspective from a larger scale and identify the current conditions of the reefs, which can greatly help scientists in conducting research.

According to biology professor Julia Baum from the University of Victoria, divers are often limited by depth of the waters while diving and since there is so much science to be uncovered from great ocean depths, studying coral reefs can be challenging and can take a very long process.

To date, coral bleaching among the Great Barrier Reef is so extensive that human divers are very limited to explore them. This area is so expansive that it would be as long as British Columbia in Canada to Baja, California and Mexico.

Hochberg who is also from the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences says NASA's CORAL will also be able to produce the most extensive images to date of the major portion of the world's coral reefs derived from a standard data set.

Using a Portable Remote Imaging Spectrometer (PRISM) aboard an airplane, CORAL will collect data from specific areas and places to further confirm observations. These areas will include key coral reefs in the Mariana Islands, Hawaii, the Great Barrier Reef and Palau.

PRISM will collect data via three different types of measurements, coral calcification, primary productivity and the amount of sand, coral and algae in any given area where these numbers will be used as a basis for future research.

This new dataset will reveal trends among biogeophysical forces that are both natural and manmade, to show the coral reefs' conditions. More importantly, this will help scientists to create better predictions of the global coral reef ecosystem and also provide crucial data for governments to provide necessary protection and conservation efforts.

TagsNASA, NASA CORAL campaign, coral reefs, Coral bleaching, Great Barrier Reef, save the coral reefs