Institute for Marine Remote Sensing (IMaRS) Millennium Coral Reef Mapping Project Fringing Reefs

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Fringing Reef New Caledonia Fringing reefs are reefs that grow along a continental land or an island. They represent a very large proportion of reefs worldwide, in every region: Caribbean (#20 Cayman Islands, #3 San Blas, Panama), Indo-Pacific (#21 New Caledonia), Pacific (#37 Mangaia, Cook Island) Indian Ocean (#22 Ningaloo Reef, Australia, #23 North Madagascar), South East Asia (#24 Sabah, Malaysia) and the Red Sea. When the fringing reef system is very narrow (#20 Cayman Islands), the images reveal only the basic structure, shape and extent of the reefs. The narrow visible part is prolonged by steep walls and slopes that harbor a very high diversity of reef organisms, but this can not be seen directly using the images. Examples of seascape and reef geomorphology.

University of South Florida > College of Marine Science > Institute for Marine Remote Sensing (IMaRS) > Millennium Corals Project Home > Geomorphology > Fringing Reefs University of South Florida, College of Marine Science, Institute for Marine Remote Sensing (IMaRS) http://imars.usf.edu/corals/fringes.html Address questions and comments to Webmaster Updated Thu Sep 22 09:27:22 EDT 2005 (BJM)