Disappearing islands: New insights into the future of coral reef islands in the Pacific

Murray Ford

School of Environment

Co-researchers

Megan Tuck
Meghna Sengupta
George Perry

Abstract

Low-lying atoll islands are often at the forefront of discussions surrounding the impacts of continued sea level rise (SLR) driven by anthropogenic climate change. One of the most widely discussed impacts of SLR is the erosion and eventual physical destruction of atoll islands. Projections of island destruction have led to the disappearing island‚ narrative which dominates political and popular media discussions of atoll island futures. Despite well-documented sea level rise over the instrumental record there is, surprisingly, no evidence of wide spread erosion of atoll islands in the Pacific. Remote sensing observations of thousands of islands on hundreds of atolls show there has been no widespread loss of land, to the contrary, island growth is the dominant mode of change observed to date. The styles and drivers of recent island change are poorly resolved. In this talk I present results of recent remote sensing, geochronological and physical modelling studies which have investigated island formation and dynamics. The future persistence of atoll islands is discussed in light of projected changes in sea level and adaptation within atoll settings.