Nichole Price, a post-doctoral researcher in the Smith Lab, and her ground breaking research in the Northern Line Islands are featured in Scripps News!

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A sparsely populated chain of islands in the central Pacific Ocean is providing new clues about the changing acidity of ocean water and its potential impact on the health of coral reefs, a rising threat to already-fragile coral ecosystems.

Instruments within tent chambers help gauge the health of coral reefs.

Nichole Price, a post-doctoral researcher at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, will present data at the 2012 American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting on groundbreaking research conducted at the Northern Line Islands archipelago during a 2010 expedition and follow-on studies (OS51H-06 · Friday, Dec. 7, 9:15 a.m. · Moscone West 3005). Price’s presentation addresses the emerging concern that coral and similar shell and skeleton-building organisms will be among the first to suffer from rising seawater pH due to carbon dioxide uptake, or ocean acidification. Such negative impacts reverberate across coral reef ecosystems and extend to the human societies that depend on them.

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