CANBERRA, Oct. 20 (Xinhua) -- Australian researchers on Tuesday welcomed the possible nomination of a reef located off the north west coast of Australia as a world heritage site.

    A Senate hearing in Canberra has been told the federal and West Australian governments are discussing boundaries for the proposed site, Ningaloo Reef, and that a nomination is likely by February next year.

    Emily Twiggs, an applied geology researcher at Perth's Curtin University, said Ningaloo was already well known as one of the world's best coral reef "laboratories".

    Twiggs and her colleagues have spent several years studying reef core samples of the eastern Ningaloo Reef within the Exmouth Gulf.

    The samples, which have given them a history of the reef's growth over several thousand years, are being used to discover how the reef has responded to environmental change, including sea-level fluctuations, coastal flooding and cyclone activity.

    The reef's isolation, pristine waters and untouched corals made it the ideal place to monitor the response of coral reefs to climate change, Twiggs said.

    "Reefs in general and the Ningaloo in particular, provide an excellent barometer with which we can monitor a changing environment," she said.

    "Because it is largely untouched by human activity, the Ningaloo Reef is one of the better coral reefs to study the impact of climate change."