Ruben van Hooidonk - NOAA's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory

Heat Tolerant Corals May Be the Key to Improving Restoration Efforts

AOML Communications — Mon, 17 May 2021 18:05:13 +0000

A new study by researchers at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science and NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory suggests that outplanting corals, specifically staghorn coral (Acropora cervicornis) from higher temperature waters to cooler waters, may be a better strategy to help corals recover from certain stressors. The researchers found that corals from reefs with higher average water temperatures showed greater healing than corals from cooler waters when exposed to heat stress.

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New Experimental Tool Has the Potential to Improve Restoration Efforts for Coral Reefs

AOML Communications — Mon, 17 May 2021 17:55:01 +0000

To help improve the long term survival of nursery raised staghorn coral (Acropora cervicornis), Ruben van Hooidonk, a coral scientist with NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory and the Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies has developed a new experimental mapping tool i that ranks suitable outplant locations. There are currently at least seven coral nurseries in Florida that cultivate staghorn coral, representing one of the best opportunities to maintain resilient populations of this species.

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UN Environment Programme 2020 Projections of Future Coral Bleaching Conditions

AOML Communications — Mon, 16 Nov 2020 19:36:00 +0000

Recently the UN Environment Programme Report on coral bleaching projections for 2020 was published, updating work that was done in 2017 using a previous generation of global climate models to project coral reef bleaching globally. The report shows some interesting new results. Ruben van Hooidonk, a coral researcher at AOML and the University of Miami Rosenstiel School Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies, was the lead author of the report.

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Researchers Explore Coral Resiliency in New Experimental Reef Laboratory

AOML Communications — Thu, 01 Jun 2017 22:17:59 +0000

Coral researchers at AOML unveiled a new state of the art experimental laboratory this spring at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel campus. The new “Experimental Reef Laboratory” will allow NOAA scientists and colleagues to study the molecular mechanisms of coral resiliency. Modeling studies indicate that thermal stress and ocean acidification will worsen in the coming decades. Scientists designed the Experimental Reef Laboratory to study the combined effect of these two threats, and determine if some corals are able to persist in a changing environment.

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Study Provides Local-scale Projections of Coral Bleaching Over the Next 100 Years

AOML Communications — Wed, 01 Apr 2015 19:59:47 +0000

In a new study published April 1 in Global Change Biology, NOAA oceanographers and colleagues have developed a new method to produce high-resolution projections of the range and onset of severe annual coral bleaching for reefs in the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean

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