The team from the Geocoastal Research Group (GRG) has just returned from a highly successful campaign to recover fossil coral reef cores from One Tree Island in the Great Barrier Reef (GBR). This is part of joint USYD/UQ/QUT Australian Research Council Discovery (ARC Discovery) supported project to investigate the growth of the reef over the last 9,000 years. Very little is known about how the GBR has responded or may respond to predicted environmental change and/or degradation. The goal was to recover transects of closely spaced cores as much as 30 m deep to reconstruct the biological and physical history of reefs in the southern GBR, helping us better understand how reefs may react to future environmental changes.

Read the full story at the link below.

http://www.geosci.usyd.edu.au/news_events/index.shtml#coringcampaign

Coring in paradise (Photo. J Webster)