Interference imaging of daily growth bands in massive corals

CORAL skeletons have been used to monitor a wide range of environmental parameters, including water temperature, insolation, siltation, river runoff and pollutant concentrations1–9. In most cases, interpretation of the coral record relies on a determination of the growth rate. Radiographic techniques9–13, which have been verified by a number of approaches8,14,15, are most commonly used for this purpose, but are restricted to the determination …