Not just pretty: end of reefs often signals mass extinction events
(NEWSER) - Climate change and the acidification of the oceans—along with overfishing, coastal development, and pollution—will destroy the Earth's coral reefs in as little as 30 years, reports the Independent . The mass-bleaching in the Indian Ocean in 1998 alone destroyed 16% of the world's reefs in just a few weeks. "We've wiped out a lot of species over the years. This will be the first time we've actually eliminated an entire ecosystem," claims Peter Sale, a marine ecologist at United Nations University, whose new book, Our Dying Planet: An Ecologist's View of the Crisis We Face , is published tomorrow. More»
