Centralized database helps scientists better understand coral reefs

Boat traffic density near Red Sea coral reefs © GEOME, LGB, EPFL Coral reefs are under a growing threat from climate change and human activity, making it more important than ever to understand their strengths and vulnerabilities. A team of scientists has now taken an important step in this direction with the new RECIFS open-access database on reef environments. The Reef Environment Centralized InFormation System ( RECIFS ) is a web application that provides a single repository of all datasets currently available on reef environments worldwide. Developed by scientists from EPFL and the ENTROPIE research group on marine ecology for the Pacific and Indian Oceans, RECIFS lets researchers compare different datasets and gain key insight into how corals are - or are not - able to adapt to climate change and stressors from human activity. The datasets provided through RECIFS originate from the public domain and contain nearly four decades of environmental measurements, including both physical properties (such as water temperature, heat waves and sea-current velocity) and chemical ones (such as chlorophyll concentration, salinity and pH). These data can be used to form hypotheses on how specific environmental variables influence reef ecosystem dynamics and develop effective conservation strategies in response. RECIFS also holds data on human activity in the proximity of coral reefs, like boat traffic (which is a source of pollution), nearby cities and their population density (which can be a sign of overfishing), and agricultural land use (which can indicate fertilizer runoff into the sea).