Palmyra Atoll is a complex of some 50 small, undeveloped islands, islets, and sand flats surrounded by more than 15,000 acres of coral reef systems and lagoons. The atoll is situated at the northern end of the Line Islands, about 1,052 miles south of Hawai’i. Center for Biodiversity and Conservation (CBC) Director Dr. Eleanor Sterling chairs the newly formed Palmyra Atoll Research Consortium (PARC), which also includes Stanford University, Scripps Institution of Oceanography (UC San Diego), California Academy of Sciences, UC Santa Barbara, UC Irvine, University of Hawai'i, Victoria University of Wellington, United States Geological Survey, and The Nature Conservancy. PARC has been developing a premier research facility on the atoll, and members of the CBC are deeply involved in both guiding this process and in conducting some of the initial scientific research.

Although the islands have never supported any permanent settlements, Palmyra’s terrestrial and lagoonal habitats have been dramatically modified by people, especially during the Second World War when U.S. forces used the island as a naval air facility and made substantial modifications, including dredging channels, creating new islands, joining islands, and building roads and runways. However, because of its isolation and relative lack of human disturbance, the deeper water marine resources have not been impacted to the degree of those in most other tropical island systems, and the atoll’s outer reef systems maintain a diverse flora and fauna thought to be reminiscent of how reef ecosystems worldwide used to be. Palmyra therefore represents a rare opportunity for researchers to gain a more complete understanding of the full suite of biodiversity making up intact reef ecosystems, and how such intact, healthy systems function. The fauna of the inner lagoon has undergone major alterations due to the joining of the islands, which dramatically changed water flow in the lagoon. Nevertheless, the complex habitats and semi-impacted waters support a large but barely studied sea turtle population. The islands also support one of the last surviving stands of Pisonia beach forest in the U.S. Pacific and a large community of seabirds. 

CBC marine researchers are in the process of developing long-term collaborative projects to study the dynamics and diversity of the benthic reef and lagoon communities of Palmyra. Among these projects are several long-term monitoring studies that will allow CBC and PARC researchers to observe and describe coral recruitment, growth, and mortality over time in order to provide a more complete understanding of how these processes contribute to reef dynamics. Studies of recruitment and early ecological succession on reefs will provide insights and predictions regarding the long-term health of the reef ecosystem, and may also provide a baseline that can be used to evaluate other Pacific coral populations that have been more heavily impacted by human disturbance.

In addition, CBC experts are evaluating the status of Palmyra's seabird and sea turtle populations. All of the CBC's work on Palmyra will provide critical information for better marine and island conservation planning, helping to uncover ways to conserve, manage, and restore the world’s increasingly threatened tropical marine ecosystems.