In the preface to The Geomorphology of the Great Barrier Reef: Quaternary Development of Coral Reefs published by one of the present authors in 1982, the opportunity for a synthesis of ideas on the geomorphology of coral reefs was identified. Almost 25 years later and with a wealth of new research and publications, there is again the need for a holistic view of the evolution of the present geomorphological features of the world's largest coral reef system, which it is hoped this book will provide. However, it is very different from the 1982 publication which attempted to fill a wide area of coral reef science, using the Great Barrier Reef as an example. This volume is much more focused on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) region and the way its features have evolved especially during the Holocene period of the last 10 000 years.

Much of the data for this period has come from programs of drilling into the reef to depths up to 25 m during the 1980s and 1990s, some of it for specific engineering or non-geomorphological purposes. By far the largest programs, however, were those headed by Professor Peter Davies (now Sydney University) of what was then the Bureau of Mineral Resources, Canberra, and one of the present authors (D. H.) and his postgraduate students. These and other drilling programs have created a data bank which could only be imagined in 1982 but it is not the only area in which the geosciences have added to the understanding of the development and processes which sustain the Reef.