![]() "This is the first time we can see the islands form, and we can say the stuff making that island is modern.so it must be coming from the reef around the island," Ford tells CNN. The study suggests that the island is built from sediment generated by the surrounding coral reef, such as from crushed up dead coral, weathered shells and dried-up microorganisms, reports EcoWatch. "That started a bit of a goldrush in terms of studies," Ford tells CNN.Īnd that goldrush led to this discovery-the first to pinpoint how these islands grow. A 2018 study found that of 30 atolls and 709 islands, 88.6 percent of them had remained the same or grown in size, reports Oliva Rosane for EcoWatch. Previous research revealed that atolls weren't losing any land mass, but researchers weren't sure why this was happening. ![]() "We have found islands are resilient in the face of rising seas and that sediment supply to some atolls is out-pacing sea level rise." "You can still see an island grow at a time when most people and most models would suggest they should be eroding," lead author Murray Ford, a coastal geomorphologist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, tells CNN. Their findings suggest that newly minted material from coral reefs is fortifying the island. They also used radiocarbon dating to calculate the age of the sediment, most of which was found to have surfaced after 1950. The scientists used satellite data and aerial imagery to study how the island grew over the decades. People who live on atolls have seen them change in size over time, but this is the first scientific paper to confirm how the process works, reports Michael Daly for Stuff, a New Zealand news media website. They found that the island's area has grown by 13 percent since 1943, reports Julia Hollingsworth for CNN. In a new study published last month in the journal Advancing Earth and Space Science, a team of scientists studied Jeh Island, an atoll in the Marshall Islands, a Pacific nation located between Hawaii and the Philippines. But in the Pacific Ocean, some atolls-ring-shaped islands sitting on coral reefs-are actually expanding over time, posing a perplexing paradox: How can drowning islands also be growing? Across the globe, sea level rise is threatening island communities.
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