NASA satellites helping to monitor Great Barrier Reef

CNN.com featured an article today about NASA’s role in a global effort to monitor the Great Barrier Reef off Australia. NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites, part of the Earth Observing System (EOS), are used to capture frequent data on ocean surface temperature and color, which are important indicators of the health of the reefs and the algae that essential to the coral. If water temperatures get too high, the algae are forced out of the coral, which become bleached and can eventually die.