11.2.2018The tiny Pacific island nation of Tuvalu, thought to be under threat from sea level rise, has actually expanded in land area over the past 40 yearsand is likely to continue to be habitable a century from now, scientists say.
New research from the University of Auckland published in Nature Communications mapped shoreline change of each of Tuvalu’s 101 islands across its nine atolls over a 40-year period.
11 of the country’s islands have a permanent human population, two have a population of more than 600.
The research team, including Professor Paul Kench, Dr Murray Ford and Dr Susan Owen from the School of Environment, used aerial photos going as far back as 1943, and photo collections from 1971 and 1984 with updated satellite imagery from 2004-2014, to compare how the shoreline of each atoll changed between 1971 and 2014.
Mapping of island size and position shows that Tuvalu has experienced a net increase in land area of 2.9 percent or 73.5ha. Overall 74 percent of islands in the group – a total of 73 – are larger now than 40 years ago...
“We tend to think of Pacific atolls as static landforms that will simply be inundated as sea levels rise but there is growing evidence these islands are geologically dynamic and are constantly changing,” says Kench!!
