Grooves in forereefs act as transport channels to deliver coral rubble during tropical cyclones
Ana Vila-Concejo, Lachlan A. Perris, Ana Paula da Silva, Kate Whitton, Liav Meoded-Stern, Wan-Yi Steilberg-Liu, Ruby Holmes, Heinrich Breuer, Maria Byrne, Thomas E. Fellowes, Tristan Salles, Bradley D. Morris, Eleanor Bruce, Emma Ryan, Hironobu Kan · 2025
Read Grooves in forereefs act as transport channels to deliver coral rubble during tropical cyclones by Ana Vila-Concejo, Lachlan A. Perris, Ana Paula da Silva, Kate Whitton, Liav Meoded-Stern, Wan-Yi Steilberg-Liu, Ruby Holmes, Heinrich Breuer, Maria Byrne, Thomas E. Fellowes, Tristan Salles, Bradley D. Morris, Eleanor Bruce, Emma Ryan, Hironobu Kan (2025) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-12780813.txt.
Description
Ana Vila-Concejo and co-authors show that reef grooves move coral rubble ashore during cyclones in this 2025 paper. Reef islands survive only if new sediment arrives from the forereef. Spurs and grooves are ridge and channel patterns fringing most reefs. They were known to shed wave energy and carry sediment offshore.
Field evidence now shows the grooves also run in reverse during storms. Cyclone waves push broken coral through the channels onto the reef flat. That delivery feeds island building and rubble ecosystems. Without it, islands would starve as seas rise and storms chew their edges. Reef shape is thus part of island defense. Protecting groove systems protects the land behind them.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Ana Vila-Concejo, Lachlan A. Perris, Ana Paula da Silva, Kate Whitton, Liav Meoded-Stern, Wan-Yi Steilberg-Liu, Ruby Holmes, Heinrich Breuer, Maria Byrne, Thomas E. Fellowes, Tristan Salles, Bradley D. Morris, Eleanor Bruce, Emma Ryan, Hironobu Kan |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2025 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 23 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |