What will the world look like in 2050?

It's 2050, and another balmy day in Los Angeles. A young woman steps outside and puts on her air filtration mask. The air is thick with smog, which aggravates her asthma. As she hurries to get into an air-conditioned, self-driving ...

Scientists discover new isopod species in the Florida Keys

An international team of scientists from the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science and the Water Research Group from the Unit for Environmental Sciences and Management at the North-West ...

Deep diving scientists discover bubbling CO2 hotspot

Diving 200 feet under the ocean surface to conduct scientific research can lead to some interesting places. For University of Texas at Austin Professor Bayani Cardenas, it placed him in the middle of a champagne-like environment ...

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Coral reef

Coral reefs are aragonite structures produced by living organisms, found in marine waters containing few nutrients. In most reefs, the predominant organisms are stony corals, colonial cnidarians that secrete an exoskeleton of calcium carbonate. The accumulation of skeletal material, broken and piled up by wave action and bioeroders, produces a calcareous formation that supports the living corals and a great variety of other animal and plant life.

Coral reefs most commonly live in tropical waters, but deep water and cold water corals exist on a much smaller scale.

Globally, coral reefs are under threat from climate change, ocean acidification, overuse of reef resources, and harmful land-use practices. High nutrient levels such as those found in runoff from agricultural areas can harm reefs by encouraging excess algae growth.

This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA