"What will coral reefs look like in 2050?"

Associate Professor Peter Ralph, Executive Director, Plant Functional Biology and Climate Change Cluster (C3), University of Technology, Sydney

Wednesday 5 August 2009 at 7 pm
Conference Room 1, Darlington Centre, University of Sydney

Corals have existed for millions of years and survived in a wide range of climates; but coral bleaching seems to have pushed corals to the brink. Research in to coral bleaching has been at the forefront of the climate change agenda for many years. It attracts much public interest, but we still do not know why corals die at temperatures only a few degrees higher than their optimum. Given the onset of coral bleaching and the combined stress of ocean acidification, I will describe how I see the Great Barrier Reef in 2050. Will the reef be dominated by fleshy macroalgae, soft corals or just a film of bacteria covering the dead coral skeletons?

The speaker's presentation can be found here: Peter Ralph Talk (36 MB PDF).

Peter Ralph is an Associate Professor at UTS and the Executive Director of the Plant Functional Biology and Climate Change Cluster (C3). He has over 15 years experience in the areas of photosynthetic physiology and ecology of marine plants and is widely regarded as a world expert in this field. His research team has made significant contributions to the physiology of marine plants, including corals, Antarctic sea-ice algae, seagrasses and macroalgae. His group includes senior research fellows, 3 post docs, 7 PhD students and 4 Honours. His team has on-going research collaborations with Danish, German, UK, US and Canadian photobiologists. Peter has been addressing questions fundamental to advancing knowledge of marine photosynthetic organisms that survive at the edge of their environmental envelope. His group is currently developing mechanistic models of microalgal photo-physiology, as well as developing a fluorescence-based proxy of primary production.