National Coral Reef Institute Published Article is one of Top 10 Most Downloaded Articles

NCRI researchers, Sam Purkis, Ph.D., and Bernhard Riegl, Ph.D., conducting research in the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean.

The success of scientific articles is often measured by the impact they make on the scientific community, expressed by the number of citations or downloads.

Researchers at the National Coral Reef Institute (NCRI) at NSU have landed a hit, as measured by download frequency. The article, Model of Coral Population Response to Accelerated Bleaching and Mass Mortality in a Changed Climate, by NSU Oceanographic Center (OC) professor and NCRI associate director, Bernhard Riegl, Ph.D., and Sam Purkis, Ph.D., NSU OC assistant professor and NCRI researcher, was first published online in December 2008. Since its debut, the article immediately rocketed to 10th place in download frequency at journal Ecological Modelling’s website.

The paper describes a theoretical evaluation of almost two decades worth of monitoring effort on high-latitude coral reefs in the Persian Gulf, from which a worldwide model of change in coral communities under climate change was derived. The article has already been cited in other papers and proves surprisingly popular on the download list.