These results will help us to predict more accurately how coral reef islands will adjust to sea-level rise. The conventional thinking is that these islands will drown over the next century as the effects of climate change are felt more strongly, but an alternative view is that enhanced flooding due to sea-level rise can help raise the island elevation. The ability of reef islands to naturally adapt to sea-level rise by raising their elevation critically depends on how much sediment they receive each year from the living coral reef system.
Professor Gerd Masselink
Professor of Coastal Geomorphology
Sediment generation and supply to islands is one of the critical controls on how islands have formed in the past, but also how they will continue to change with rising sea levels. Rates of sediment supply to islands are poorly understood. This research provides an important development in establishing long-term rates of sediment delivery to islands that will support their ongoing adjustment to changing environmental conditions.
Professor of Tropical Coastal Change at the National University of Singapore
- The full study – Ainési, Masselink and Kench: Meta-Study of Carbonate Sediment Delivery Rates to Indo-Pacific Coral Reef Islands – is published in Geophysical Research Letters, DOI: 10.1029/2023GL105610.
Coastal Processes Research Group
- beach morphodynamics and nearshore sediment transport
- coastal erosion and storm impacts
- video monitoring of coastal systems
- coastal process modelling
- estuarine processes and evolution.