Coral Reefs

Photo from flickr.com by Androfire (Some rights reserved)

From the IGCSE syllabus:

Describe the conditions required for the development of
coral reefs.

Describe
•  fringing and barrier reefs
• atolls

Describe the location of coral reefs, and the necessary conditions for their development:

http://library.thinkquest.org/C0125204/about/coraldist.swf

http://www.mbgnet.net/salt/coral/where.htm

http://www.seaworld.org/infobooks/coral/habdiscr.html

http://www.starfish.ch/reef/reef.html

http://www.marinebio.net/marinescience/04benthon/crform.htm

Understand and make brief notes on how coral reefs operate as an ecosystem:

Make notes on the different types of reef and how they are formed. Sketch diagrams to add to your explanations. Make sure you focus on fringing reefs, barrier reefs and atolls. For each, you should be able to give a named example. :

http://www.jochemnet.de/fiu/OCB3043_39.html

http://www.starfish.ch/reef/reef.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atoll

Fringing reef:

Source: http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2002/fs025-02/

Atolls:

Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ulithi-atoll.gif

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Coral_atoll_formation_animation.gif

Source: http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2002/fs025-02/

Describe and explain the human threats posed to coral reefs, and try to give named examples:

http://www.mbgnet.net/salt/coral/threats.htm

http://www.marinebio.net/marinescience/04benthon/crform.htm

Research some of the possible solutions to these threats.

http://www.nature.org/joinanddonate/rescuereef/explore/help.html