The grounds at the Owensboro Sportscenter and Moreland Park were full with vehicles, spectators, entertainment and food trucks as the inaugural Bluegrass Legends Experience came to a close Sunday.
The core research facilities in the University of Rhode Island’s College of Engineering feature some of the most sophisticated, state-of-the-art equipment found anywhere. .
The findings offer the baseline values that can be utilized to judge if nursery-reared staghorn corals have sufficiently strong skeletons for the wild and to match them to regions with environmental situations that optically suit their skeleton strength.
The name staghorn coral came from the antler-like shape of its branches, which generates a complex underwater habitat for reef organisms and fish. It is mainly found in shallow waters close to Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Florida Keys, and other Caribbean islands but has dropped by over 97% since the 1980s.
Even though restoration efforts through transplanted, nursery-reared coral are on-going, investigators continue to work to raise their success rate.
Credit: Mahmoud Omer, University of Central Florida
ORLANDO, Jan. 8, 2021 - Florida s threatened coral reefs have a more than $4 billion annual economic impact on the state s economy, and University of Central Florida researchers are zeroing in on one factor that could be limiting their survival - coral skeleton strength.
In a new study published in the journal
Coral Reefs, UCF engineering researchers tested how well staghorn coral skeletons withstand the forces of nature and humans, such as impacts from hurricanes and divers.
The researchers subjected coral skeletons to higher stresses than those caused by ocean waves, says Mahmoud Omer, a doctoral student in UCF s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and study co-author. Under normal wave and tide regimes, a staghorn coral s skeleton will resist the physical forces exerted by the ocean waves. However, anthropogenic stressors such as harmful sunscreen ingredients, elevated ocean temperature, pollution and ocean