GEOS 25
Monitoring a Coral Reef Complex
Last Offered n/a

This course is not offered in the current catalog

Participants will spend two weeks camping and conducting field work on St. John in the US Virgin Islands, preceded by preparatory time at Williams, and followed by further time back at Williams carrying out data reduction and analysis. The aim of the course is to make a detailed map of the Mary Creek fringing reef complex in the Virgin Islands National Park, and to track and interpret on-going changes in its ecology and sedimentology. In 1998 a group of Williams students mapped the Mary Creek Reef Complex and discovered that large-scale transformation had occurred since previous mapping in 1968. A second group mapped the reef in 2004, and showed that some ecological recovery was in progress. We will return in 2010 to continue this reef-monitoring project. Detailed surveying and analysis of modifications that have occurred since 2004 will allow us to better understand this reef complex, and to put constraints on models for its recent evolution in the context of tourism-based environmental pressure.