Dr. Bernhard Riegl
Role in the Farasan Banks Project: The questions he asked in this research dealt with the persistence corals in high-disturbance regimes and under global climate change. On a broad scale, he looked at the spatial distribution of corals in the landscape, and the size/frequency distribution of their patches. Because this coarse scale does not provide details required to model coral communities, he also used photo-transects to obtain finer-scale information on the presence and absence of different taxa, their size frequency distribution, and interactions between species.
Bio Summary: Bernhard is the associate director of the National Coral Reef Institute (NCRI) and a professor at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He also holds adjunct appointments at the University of Miami and the University of Graz in Austria. He has a M.Sc. from University of Vienna, Austria and a Ph.D. from the University of Cape Town, South Africa. His research centers on coral reefs and other tropical benthic biota, such as seagrass and algae. He is a hybrid earth/life scientist with an interest in coral reef biology and geology. Among his other foibles are mapping reefs and the assessment and monitoring of reef quality.His research and publications have involved the paleontology, sedimentology, spatial dynamics, ecology, taxonomy and conservation biology of coral reefs and associated organisms. He is also active in hydrographic survey, particularly sonar-based seafloor discrimination, which he integrates with optical remote-sensing to provide high-resolution maps of the seafloor. His research has taken place in the Red Sea, Arabian Gulf, Indian Ocean, South Pacific, Eastern Pacific, tropical Atlantic and Caribbean. His career in coral reef research spans nearly two decades and over 100 scientific and popular publications.
