The University of British Columbia

A University of British Columbia-led research team has developed a new global coral bleaching database that could help scientists predict future bleaching events. Until now, knowledge of the geographic extent of mass coral bleaching has been incomplete. To build the database, the researchers scoured academic journals, government documents and other sources for reports of coral bleaching missing from an existing voluntary database commonly used by scientists. Then, they personally contacted local experts in places where they suspected coral bleaching had occurred.