Oceans

Coral reefs are under assault from coastal and near-shore development, overfishing, and climate change. Without rapid intervention, coral reefs will continue to degrade, resulting in what may be the first human-caused loss of an entire biome.

Asner Lab created the global Reefscape Program to combine science, technology, conservation, governance, and community engagement at scales ranging from individual corals and fish to the Earth’s entire coral reef biome.

Allen Coral Atlas

The Allen Coral Atlas is led by Asner Lab to map and monitor the world’s coral reefs using satellites and field programs. Coral reefs are among the most important ecosystems on our planet. A few facts: at least 25% of marine species depend on coral reefs at some point in their life cycle. More than […]

Coral Haven Project

As our oceans continue to warm and to experience heat waves caused by climate change, it is critically important to understand and continuously update our knowledge on where corals persist. Natural reef ecosystems are the most important and geographically extensive homes for remaining corals, but other places may also harbor corals over the coming decades […]

Hawaii Coral Program

Asner Lab partners with the State of Hawaii, NOAA, and local communities to drive new science-based decision-making for coral reefs and fisheries. In less than fifty years, Hawaii’s unique and highly endemic coral reefs have undergone alarming losses in coral extent and health as well as in fish populations. The Hawaiian Islands are now in […]

Caribbean Reef Conservation

Asner Lab maps numerous countries in the Caribbean for conservation planning and management in partnership with The Nature Conservancy in the Caribbean, Planet, and Vulcan Inc. Our lab has produced high-resolution maps of important shallow underwater habitats throughout the entire Caribbean—including all shallow-water coral reefs. For the first time ever, countries and territories now have […]

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CoralSpec Program

CoralSpec, which is short for Coral Spectranomics, is a project to develop a spectral and chemical library of the critical, habitat-forming coral species of our planet. This project aims to visit as many coral reefs as possible to collect field-based spectral measurements and samples for subsequent chemical analyses in our laboratory. This global field program […]