Darwin sure was a productive guy. When he wasn't busy developing the most important theory in biology, he apparently found time to map the world's coral reefs. And it's a good thing he did, because until recently, they were still the best reef maps available.
Darwin based his maps on observations from his global expeditions in the first half of the 19th century, but scientists can now monitor the state of the world's coral reefs with satellites. After more than a century, technology from NASA has at last made it possible to produce maps with new details, such as the quality and temperature of the water surrounding coral reefs.
"Until we made the map of coral reefs with Landsat 7, global maps of reefs had not improved a lot since the amazing maps that Darwin drafted," said Frank Muller-Karger, professor of oceanography at the University of South Florida, in a release from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.
