Focus On: Great Barrier Reef

The Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest coral reef system, and is listed as a World Heritage Site. People come from all over the world to visit it, and it was recently placed at number 2 in Lonely Planet's Ultimate Travel List (a list of the world's top 500 sights). Unfortunately, the health of the Great Barrier Reef has been declining, and it recently only narrowly avoided being placed on UNESCO's World Heritage in Danger List (though it is still firmly on the watch list, with its status to be reviewed in 4 years' time).

AIMS has been monitoring the Great Barrier Reef for over 20 years, surveying the health of 47 midshore and offshore reefs across the Great Barrier Reef region. For more information on the AIMS reef monitoring programs, click here.

All articles below are from journals that AIMS is subscribed to, and should therefore be freely accessible by AIMS staff.

Please note the publication dates on these articles as many are older articles.

A. D. McKinnon, M. Logan, S. A. Castine and S. Duggan (2013) Pelagic metabolism in the waters of the Great Barrier Reef, Limnology and Oceanography, Volume 58, Issue 4, 1227–1242 Link to Abstract/Full Text

Ana Redondo-Rodriguez, Scarla J. Weeks, Ray Berkelmans, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, Janice M. Lough (2012) Climate variability of the Great Barrier Reef in relation to the tropical Pacific and El Niño-Southern Oscillation, Marine and Freshwater Research, Volume 63, Number 1, 34-47 Link to Abstract/Full Text

Fernando P. Andutta, Peter V. Ridd, E. Wolanski (2013) The age and the flushing time of the Great Barrier Reef waters, Continental Shelf Research, Volume 53, 11-19 Link to Abstract/Full Text

Glenn De'ath, Janice M. Lough, and Katharina E. Fabricius (2009) Declining Coral Calcification on the Great Barrier Reef, Science, 116-119 Link to Abstract/Full Text

Glenn De’ath, Katharina E. Fabricius, Hugh Sweatman, and Marji Puotinen (2012) The 27–year decline of coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef and its causes, PNAS, Volume 109, Number 44, 17995-17999 Link to Abstract/Full Text

John F. Marshall & Peter J. Davies (1984) Last interglacial reef growth beneath modern reefs in the southern Great Barrier Reef, Nature, Volume 307, 44–46 Link to Abstract/Full Text

Jonathan Lambrechts, Emmanuel Hanert, Eric Deleersnijder, Paul-Emile Bernard, Vincent Legat, Jean-François Remacle, Eric Wolanski (2008) A multi-scale model of the hydrodynamics of the whole Great Barrier Reef, Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science, Volume 79, Issue 1, 143-151 Link to Abstract/Full Text

Jonathan Nott & Matthew Hayne (2001) High frequency of ‘super-cyclones’ along the Great Barrier Reef over the past 5,000 years, Nature, Volume 413, 508–512 Link to Abstract/Full Text

Jon Brodie, Jane Waterhouse (2012) A critical review of environmental management of the ‘not so Great’ Barrier Reef, Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science, Volumes 104–105, 1-22 Link to Abstract/Full Text

Katharina E. Fabricius, Timothy F. Cooper, Craig Humphrey, Sven Uthicke, Glenn De’ath, Johnston Davidson, Hélène LeGrand, Angus Thompson, Britta Schaffelke (2012) A bioindicator system for water quality on inshore coral reefs of the Great Barrier Reef, Marine Pollution Bulletin, Volume 65, Issues 4–9, 320-332 Link to Abstract/Full Text

K. E. Fabricius, M. Logan, S. Weeks, J. Brodie (2014) The effects of river run-off on water clarity across the central Great Barrier Reef, Marine Pollution Bulletin, Volume 84, Issues 1–2, 191-200 Link to Abstract/Full Text

Laurence J. McCook, Tony Ayling, Mike Cappo, J. Howard Choat, Richard D. Evans, Debora M. De Freitas, Michelle Heupel, Terry P. Hughes, Geoffrey P. Jones, Bruce Mapstone, Helene Marsh, Morena Mills, Fergus J. Molloy, C. Roland Pitcher, Robert L. Pressey, Garry R. Russ, Stephen Sutton, Hugh Sweatman, Renae Tobin, David R. Wachenfeld, and David H. Williamson (2010) Adaptive management of the Great Barrier Reef: A globally significant demonstration of the benefits of networks of marine reserves, PNAS, Volume 107, Number 43, 18278-18285 Link to Abstract/Full Text

Leanne Fernandes, Jon Day, Adam Lewis, Suzanne Slegers, Brigid Kerrigan, Dan Breen, Darren Cameron, Belinda Jago, James Hall, David Lowe, James Innes, John Tanzer, Virginia Chadwick, Leanne Thompson, Kerrie Gorman, Mark Simmons, Bryony Barnett, Kirsti Sampson, Glenn De'ath, Bruce Mapstone, Helene Marsh, Hugh Possingham, Ian Ball, Trevor Ward, Kirstin Dobbs, James Aumend, Deb Slater and Kate Stapleton (2005) Establishing Representative No-Take Areas in the Great Barrier Reef: Large-Scale Implementation of Theory on Marine Protected Areas, Conservation Biology, Volume 19, Issue 6, 1733–1744 Link to Abstract/Full Text

L. R. Little, R. Q. Grafton, T. Kompas, A. D. M. Smith, A. E. Punt and B. D. Mapstone (2011) Complementarity of No-Take Marine Reserves and Individual Transferable Catch Quotas for Managing the Line Fishery of the Great Barrier Reef, Conservation Biology, Volume 25, Issue 2, 333–340 Link to Abstract/Full Text

Malcolm McCulloch, Stewart Fallon, Timothy Wyndham, Erica Hendy, Janice Lough & David Barnes (2003) Coral record of increased sediment flux to the inner Great Barrier Reef since European settlement, Nature, Volume 421, 727–730 Link to Abstract/Full Text

M. Furnas, D. Alongi, D. McKinnon, L. Trott, M. Skuza (2011) Regional-scale nitrogen and phosphorus budgets for the northern (14°S) and central (17°S) Great Barrier Reef shelf ecosystem, Continental Shelf Research, Volume 31, Issues 19–20, 1967-1990 Link to Abstract/Full Text

Natalie C. Ban, Robert L. Pressey and Scarla Weeks (2012) Conservation Objectives and Sea-Surface Temperature Anomalies in the Great Barrier Reef, Conservation Biology, Volume 26, Issue 5, 799–809 Link to Abstract/Full Text

Per Olsson, Carl Folke, and Terry P. Hughes (2008) Navigating the transition to ecosystem-based management of the Great Barrier Reef, Australia, PNAS, Volume 105, Number 28, 9489-9494 Link to Abstract/Full Text

P. J. Davies, P. A. Symonds, D. A. Feary, and C. J. Pigram (1987) Horizontal Plate Motion: A Key Allocyclic Factor in the Evolution of the Great Barrier Reef, Science, 1697-1700 Link to Abstract/Full Text

Raechel Littman, Bette L. Willis and David G. Bourne (2011) Metagenomic analysis of the coral holobiont during a natural bleaching event on the Great Barrier Reef, Environmental Microbiology Reports, Volume 3, Issue 6, 651–660 Link to Abstract/Full Text

Ray Berkelmans, Scarla J. Weeks and Craig R. Steinberg (2010) Upwelling linked to warm summers and bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef, Limnology and Oceanography, Volume 55, Issue 6, 2634–2644 Link to Abstract/Full Text

R. Greiner, A. Herr, J. Brodie, D. Haynes (2005) A multi-criteria approach to Great Barrier Reef catchment (Queensland, Australia) diffuse-source pollution problem, Marine Pollution Bulletin, Volume 51, Issues 1–4, 128-137 Link to Abstract/Full Text

Robert G. Coles, Michael A. Rasheed, Len J. McKenzie, Alana Grech, Paul H. York, Marcus Sheaves, Skye McKenna, Catherine Bryant (2015) The Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area seagrasses: Managing this iconic Australian ecosystem resource for the future, Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science, Volume 153, A1-A12 Link to Abstract/Full Text

Ronnie N. Glud, Bradley D. Eyre and Nicole Patten (2008) Biogeochemical responses to mass coral spawning at the Great Barrier Reef: Effects on respiration and primary production, Limnology and Oceanography, Volume 53, Issue 3, 1014–1024 Link to Abstract/Full Text

Scott A. Wooldridge (2009) Water quality and coral bleaching thresholds: Formalising the linkage for the inshore reefs of the Great Barrier Reef, Australia, Marine Pollution Bulletin, Volume 58, Issue 5, 745-751 Link to Abstract/Full Text

Terry P. Hughes, Jon C. Day & Jon Brodie (2015) Securing the future of the Great Barrier Reef, Nature Climate Change, Volume 5, 508–511 Link to Abstract/Full Text

Thomas Felis, Helen V. McGregor, Braddock K. Linsley, Alexander W. Tudhope, Michael K. Gagan, Atsushi Suzuki, Mayuri Inoue, Alexander L. Thomas, Tezer M. Esat, William G. Thompson, Manish Tiwari, Donald C. Potts, Manfred Mudelsee, Yusuke Yokoyama & Jody M. Webster (2014) Intensification of the meridional temperature gradient in the Great Barrier Reef following the Last Glacial Maximum, Nature Communications, Volume 5, 4102 Link to Abstract/Full Text

Todd C. LaJeunesse, William K. W. Loh, Robert van Woesik, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, Gregory W. Schmidt and William K. Fitt (2003) Low symbiont diversity in southern Great Barrier Reef corals, relative to those of the Caribbean, Limnology and Oceanography, Volume 48, Issue 5, 2046–2054 Link to Abstract/Full Text

Verena Witt, Christian Wild, Kenneth R. N. Anthony, Guillermo Diaz-Pulido and Sven Uthicke (2011) Effects of ocean acidification on microbial community composition of, and oxygen fluxes through, biofilms from the Great Barrier Reef, Environmental Microbiology, Volume 13, Issue 11, 2976–2989 Link to Abstract/Full Text

X. Zhu, P.J. Minnett, R. Berkelmans, J. Hendee, C. Manfrino (2014) Diurnal warming in shallow coastal seas: Observations from the Caribbean and Great Barrier Reef regions, Continental Shelf Research, Volume 82, 85-98 Link to Abstract/Full Text

Please Note: The full content of AIMS online subscriptions are not available to the general public. Use of electronic journals is subject to copyright laws. Use and copy for individual and collaborative research is expected; however, systematic downloading and/or redistribution to non-subscribers is prohibited. Users must read and observe the terms and conditions of use as published on the websites of the publications concerned.