Study Area
Credit: David Burdock (NOAA). Download this image (JPG, 1.1 MB).
Corals are crucial to Earth's ecosystem, but they are typically studied only occasionally during diving expeditions. This means that many of the world's reefs have never been surveyed. Yet coral reefs host one-quarter of all ocean fish species, shelter shorelines from storms and are a source of food for millions of people.
This NASA campaign, aptly named CORAL (short for COral Reef Airborne Laboratory), aims to assess the condition of these vulnerable ecosystems and collect data on the size and quality of the reefs.
Read more here.