INFORMing reef environmental management with coral geochemical records

• Applicant: Dr. Edmund Hathorne
• Subject Area: Geology
• Term: since 2026
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 569254805

Coral reefs are threatened by global change and local human activities. Enacting solutions to these problems to protect and rebuild coral reef ecosystems is a decadal grand challenge, especially for communities with coral reefs. Massive coral skeletons record the environmental conditions in which they grew at a sub-seasonal resolution for multiple centuries and the seawater trace metal history from corals has been used to identify periods of increased sediment and pollution input from agriculture, mining, and deforestation. Before using coral geochemistry to document the human impact on coral reefs, INFORM would follow a new approach by first asking local stake holders: What information from coral geochemistry would be most useful when making decisions to protect their reefs? This co-design would determine the sampling and experiments to be conducted in a location while co-creation will involve local researchers and stakeholders in an iterative research process. This will not only produce cutting edge research on coral reef geochemistry but will also provide information in a way which can be most readily used to enact changes to protect reef ecosystems in each location. Potential geochemical proxies include Ba and rare earth elements for sediment loading, carbon isotopes for turbidity, and various heavy metals like Cu and Pb for pollution. The potential locations are in Mexico, Brazil and Cape Verde, where world leading local academic partners who already collaborate closely with the network are based. The potential locations represent a range of settings and disturbance from the strongly developed tourism of Mexico and the industrial surroundings in Brazil to the actively developing Cape Verde islands. By co-designing and co-creating the research with local people and organisations that use or impact the reefs, all parties involved will learn from each other and produce science that they understand and can use to take actions to better protect the reefs. This transdisciplinary aspect of the research would act as a light house project demonstrating how coral geochemistry research can be conducted inclusively and this practical knowledge and experience would be shared through the network and beyond. The successful project would provide vital information to inform coral reef protection activities but would also produce a legacy of inclusiveness within coral reef research.

• DFG Programme: Priority Programmes
• Subproject of: SPP 2299: Tropical Climate Variability and Coral Reefs. A Past to Future Perspective on Current Rates of Change at Ultra-High Resolution
• International Connection: Brazil, Cape Verde, Mexico, United Kingdom
• Co-Investigator: Dr. Marlene Wall
• Cooperation Partners: Professorin Dr. Corrine Almeida; Dr. Juan Pablo D' Olivo; Dr. Natan Silva Pereira; Professor Dr. Jens Zinke, Ph.D.