Thanks birdman29 for that very clear academic reference A global assessment of atoll island planform changes over the past decades Virginie K. E. Duvat 25Oct2018 https://wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/wcc.557 Quote from the start of the Abstract[Over the past decades, atoll islands exhibited no widespread sign of physical destabilization in the face of sea-level rise. A reanalysis of available data, which cover 30 Pacific and Indian Ocean atolls including 709 islands, reveals that no atoll lost land area and that 88.6% of islands were either stable or increased in area, while only 11.4% contracted.]
This got me to dig out a pdf paper off my HDD authored by the great Nils Axel Morner - he recounts the story of how maybe 20 years ago now an Australian scientific party is said to have cut down the above tree in the Maldives.To download his paper in pdf search for the Maldives university link below - Nils-Axel Mo¨rner Paleogeophysics & Geodynamics, Ro¨sundava¨gen 17, 13336 Saltsjo¨baden, Sweden saruna.mnu.edu.mv/jspui/bitstream/123456789/14916/1 -- "The Maldives a measure of sea level changes and sea level ethics".pdf...the Maldives partly because this is an area where multiple sea level parameters interact (Mo ̈rner, 2000) and partly because this was a key area for the proposed sea level rise as a function of global warming (IPCC, 2001). We have made three major expeditions to the Maldives and three shorter visits.
