By Janet Raloff
Over the past several decades, the world’s coral reefs have been succumbing in record numbers to such stresses as climate warming, pollution, and bashings from ships and their gear. Scientists have monitored the toll by diving to a few sites on each reef and surveying presumably representative areas of health and damage.
Now, European scientists report using special digital sensors on a plane 250 meters in the air to diagnose more comprehensively the health of reefs.