Subscribe to one of our news e-mail lists. Amid reports of a sharp rise in the death of the world's coral reefs, NASA released satellite images Wednesday that could provide a helping hand in locating dead or dying reefs. Infrared images from NASA's Landsat 7 satellite highlight living, growing areas of coral, which appear bright red in the images. Areas where organisms have stopped growing on coral reefs appear gray. Previously, coral reef health has been monitored by direct, underwater observation.
Many scientists regard the sharp decline in reef health as alarming.
United Nations-sponsored research estimates that 20 percent of the world's coral structures have died or become badly damaged in the past 20 years and that most of the world's coral could be similarly threatened in the next 50 years. The Landsat images represent a major shortcut in the costly, time-consuming process of monitoring reefs. We need to use remote sensing to help fight for their conservation. The scientists say they have already archived 5,000 images from over 2,000 coral reefs. Coral exists throughout the world's tropical oceans.