Credit: Kristin Hoel, Unsplash

Every shallow-water coral reef ecosystem in Australia faces an extremely high risk of collapse by 2075, driven largely by projected ocean warming, according to a global assessment .

The assessment, a collaboration between the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), researchers at the University of Melbourne and more than 250 researchers around the world, found that 96% of the world's assessed coral reef ecosystems are now classified as critically endangered under the IUCN Red List of Ecosystems.

The study evaluated coral reef ecosystems in 127 tropical and subtropical marine ecoregions, including some of the world's largest and most biodiverse reef systems such as Australia's Great Barrier Reef, the Coral Triangle in Southeast Asia and the western Pacific, the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef and the Red Sea.

The assessment classified all 17 Australian coral reef ecosystems as critically endangered, with increasing marine heat stress and mass bleaching predicted…