According to the public relations and information center of the Vice-Presidency for science and technology affairs, the Iranian national science foundation announced the support of researchers and technologists of the Vice-Presidency in line with its long-term goals to receive research projects on preserving the Persian Gulf. Some of the long-term goals of the national science foundation include preserving the biodiversity of the Persian Gulf and informing the public about taking care of them. Therefore, as the first step, the foundation will support research projects with priorities of the current condition of these ecosystems, collection of current or new data and performing ecological research in this area.

In this regard and to establish a coordinated system for managing research projects in the mentioned three areas, researchers can send their primary proposal to the email address of persiangulf@insf.org until March 20^th 2018. During this process, the primary proposals will be evaluated by the referees of the evaluation council of the foundation and those projects related to the prioritized areas performed by experienced researchers will be approved to send their complete proposal for final evaluation.

To learn more about this issue, please refer to the website of the Iranian national science foundation.

According to this report, in addition to being located in higher latitudes, the Persian Gulf has low depth and is on the big desert belt. Therefore, it is exposed to extreme heat and has a high salinity level, which have turned it into a natural laboratory for evaluation of different ecosystem reactions to global warming.

Over the past decades, the Persian Gulf and its coastal ecosystem have been exposed to different forms of severe pollution: river systems, industrial fishing, coral stone destruction and mangrove forests, urbanism, the growing development of shores, the evacuation of domestic and industrial wastes and agricultural pollution. Coral reefs, mangrove forests and grassland are three major ecosystems of Persian Gulf. To date, more than 35 coral species have been recognized near the Iranian islands of the Persian Gulf.