© 2024 WLRN
MIAMI | SOUTH FLORIDA
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Runoff Water From Orlando Linked To Death Florida Keys Coral, Study Says

Brian Lapointe
/
Florida Atlantic University’s Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute
A dying brain coral in Looe Key in the lower Florida Keys on March 2016.

A landmark 30-year study of ailing coral in the Florida Keys shows nutrient-supercharged water from as far north as Orlando is contributing to the death of an ancient ecosystem that evolved to thrive in a fertilizer-free environment.

The research, published Monday in the international journal Marine Biology, was led by Florida Atlantic University’s Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute using measurements that date back to 1984, as The Palm Beach Post Reports. The breadth of the data makes it the longest record of its kind anywhere in the world, according to FAU.

A key point of the findings is that warming ocean temperatures are not the lone killer of Keys’ coral, but part of a knot of man-induced challenges that includes higher rainfall rates from climate change that wash nitrogen-enriched waters through the greater Everglades and into Florida Bay.

More On This Topic