Chris Perry

• Professor in Tropical Coastal Geoscience, University of Exeter

Marine geoscientist with interests in the processes controlling the development and growth of tropical coral reefs and low-lying coral reef islands.

Chris Perry is a professor in Tropical Coastal Geoscience at the University of Exeter. His research focuses on addressing questions about the response of tropical coastal and shallow marine ecosystems (specifically coral reefs and coral reef islands) to the impacts of environmental and climatic change. Increasingly this work has been focussed on the consequences of these impacts, and on resultant reef species transitions and biodiversity shifts, for the geo-ecological functions that reefs sustain. These functions include the maintenance of reef structures and reef structural complexity, reef accretion potential and reef-derived sediment supply.

Central to addressing these challengers has been the development of two reef status and monitoring tools, ReefBudget and the more recent SedBudget methodologies. Both are census-based and have potential to be integrated within wider reef monitoring programmes. ReefBudget has been designed to generate site-specific estimates of rates of biological carbonate production and erosion from which carbonate budgets can be derived. SedBudget generates estimates of biogenic reef-derived sediment production. These tools have been used to assess the implications of ecological change on reef growth potential and island sediment supply, have underpinned novel assessments of within-country and across region carbonate budget states, and been used to explore the impacts of the 2015-16 bleaching event on reef carbonate budgets.

• –present Professor in Tropical Coastal Geoscience, University of Exeter

• 1997 University of Reading, Ph.D

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