A Review of How Uncertainties in Management Decisions Are Addressed in Coastal Louisiana Restoration

Louisiana has lost over 4800 km2 of coastal land since 1932, and a large-scale effort to restore coastal Louisiana is underway, guided by Louisiana’s Comprehensive Master Plan for a Sustainable Coast. This paper reviews science-based planning processes to address uncertainties in management decisions, and determine the most effective combination of restoration and flood risk reduction projects to reduce land loss, maintain and restore coastal environments, and sustain communities. The large-scale effort to restore coastal Louisiana is made more challenging by uncertainties in sediment in the Mississippi River, rising sea levels, subsidence, storms, oil and gas activities, flood-control levees, and navigation infrastructure. To inform decision making, CPRA uses structured approaches to incorporate science at all stages of restoration project planning and implementation to: (1) identify alternative management actions, (2) select the management action based on the best available science, and (3) assess performance of the implemented management decisions. Applied science and synthesis initiatives are critical for solving scientific and technical uncertainties in the successive stages of program and project management, from planning, implementation, operations, to monitoring and assessment. The processes developed and lessons learned from planning and implementing restoration in coastal Louisiana are relevant to other vulnerable coastal regions around the globe.

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Habitat Restoration as a Key Conservation Lever for Woodland Caribou: A review of restoration programs and key learnings from Alberta

Rangifer ◽

10.7557/2.35.2.3646 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 35 (2) ◽

pp. 123 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Paula Bentham ◽

Brian Coupal

Keyword(s):

Habitat Management ◽

Large Scale ◽

Habitat Restoration ◽

Oil And Gas ◽

Program Planning ◽

Local Population ◽

Lessons Learned ◽

Tree Planting ◽

Woodland Caribou ◽

Recovery Strategy

The Recovery Strategy for the Woodland Caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou), Boreal Population in Canada (EC, 2012), identifies coordinated actions to reclaim woodland caribou habitat as a key step to meeting current and future caribou population objectives. Actions include restoring industrial landscape features such as roads, seismic lines, pipelines, cut-lines, and cleared areas in an effort to reduce landscape fragmentation and the changes in caribou population dynamics associated with changing predator-prey dynamics in highly fragmented landscapes. Reliance on habitat restoration as a recovery action within the federal recovery strategy is high, considering all Alberta populations have less than 65% undisturbed habitat, which is identified in the recovery strategy as a threshold providing a 60% chance that a local population will be self-sustaining. Alberta’s Provincial Woodland Caribou Policy also identifies habitat restoration as a critical component of long-term caribou habitat management. We review and discuss the history of caribou habitat restoration programs in Alberta and present outcomes and highlights of a caribou habitat restoration workshop attended by over 80 representatives from oil and gas, forestry, provincial and federal regulators, academia and consulting who have worked on restoration programs. Restoration initiatives in Alberta began in 2001 and have generally focused on construction methods, revegetation treatments, access control programs, and limiting plant species favourable to alternate prey. Specific treatments include tree planting initiatives, coarse woody debris management along linear features, and efforts for multi-company and multi-stakeholder coordinated habitat restoration on caribou range. Lessons learned from these programs have been incorporated into large scale habitat restoration projects near Grande Prairie, Cold Lake, and Fort McMurray. A key outcome of our review is the opportunity to provide a unified approach for restoration program planning, best practices, key performance indicators, and monitoring considerations for future programs within Canada.

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Reducing uncertainty in the assessment and management of fish resources following an environmental impact

ICES Journal of Marine Science ◽

10.1093/icesjms/fsr079 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 68 (8) ◽

pp. 1726-1733 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Douglas Rotherham ◽

William G. Macbeth ◽

Steven J. Kennelly ◽

Charles A. Gray

Keyword(s):

Environmental Impact ◽

Large Scale ◽

Lessons Learned ◽

Sources Of Information ◽

Fish Kill ◽

Management Decisions ◽

Fish Resources ◽

South Wales ◽

Eastern Australia ◽

Different Sources

Abstract Rotherham, D., Macbeth, W. G., Kennelly, S. J., and Gray, C. A. 2011. Reducing uncertainty in the assessment and management of fish resources following an environmental impact. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 68: 1726–1733. The limitations of using information from commercial fisheries for assessing and managing resources and ecosystems are well known. Although fishery-independent data may overcome many such limitations, few studies have examined how incorporating data from different sources affects assessments and subsequent management decisions. Here, the value of integrating data from two types of sampling survey to assess the recovery of faunal populations following a severe fish-kill event in the Richmond River (New South Wales, Australia) in 2008 is evaluated. There is occasional large-scale mortality of fish and invertebrates in certain estuaries of eastern Australia following major flood events. In extreme cases, the management response involves closing an entire estuary to all fishing, to facilitate the recolonization and recovery of fish and other fauna. Decisions to resume normal fishing activities have environmental, economic, and social implications. Using lessons learned from a similar fish-kill event in 2001, it is shown how, in 2008, fishery-independent sampling, combined with improved sampling by commercial fishers, reduced uncertainty in decision-making and led to greatly improved socio-economic outcomes for stakeholders. The work highlights the need to examine the value of different sources of information to improve management decisions.

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Mangrove Restoration in the Vicinity of Oil and Gas Facilities: Lessons Learned From a Large-Scale Project

10.2118/168449-ms ◽

2014 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Eric Dutrieux ◽

Christophe Proisy ◽

Francois Fromard ◽

Romain Walcker ◽

Muhammad Ilman ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Large Scale ◽

Oil And Gas ◽

Lessons Learned ◽

Mangrove Restoration ◽

Large Scale Project

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Spatiotemporal monitoring of hydrilla [Hydrilla verticillata (L. f.) Royle] to aid management actions

Weed Technology ◽

10.1017/wet.2019.13 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 33 (03) ◽

pp. 518-529 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Abhishek Kumar ◽

Christopher Cooper ◽

Caren M. Remillard ◽

Shuvankar Ghosh ◽

Austin Haney ◽

...

Keyword(s):

South Carolina ◽

Mississippi River ◽

Water Resource Management ◽

Large Scale ◽

Light Attenuation ◽

Hydrilla Verticillata ◽

Army Corps ◽

Landsat 8 ◽

Management Actions ◽

Physical Measurements

AbstractHydrilla is an invasive aquatic plant that has rapidly spread through many inland water bodies across the globe by outcompeting native aquatic plants. The negative impacts of hydrilla invasion have become a concern for water resource management authorities, power companies, and environmental scientists. The early detection of hydrilla infestation is very important to reduce the costs associated with control and removal efforts of this invasive species. Therefore, in this study, we aimed to develop a tool for rapid, frequent, and large-scale monitoring and predicting spatial extent of hydrilla habitat. This was achieved by integrating in situ and Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager satellite data for Lake J. Strom Thurmond, the largest US Army Corps of Engineers lake east of the Mississippi River, located on the border of Georgia and South Carolina border. The predictive model for presence of hydrilla incorporated radiometric and physical measurements, including remote-sensing reflectance, Secchi disk depth (SDD), light-attenuation coefficient (Kd), maximum depth of colonization (Zc), and percentage of light available through the water column (PLW). The model-predicted ideal habitat for hydrilla featured high SDD, Zc, and PLW values, low values of Kd. Monthly analyses based on satellite images showed that hydrilla starts growing in April, reaches peak coverage around October, begins retreating in the following months, and disappears in February. Analysis of physical and meteorological factors (i.e., water temperature, surface runoff, net inflow, precipitation) revealed that these parameters are closely associated with hydrilla extent. Management agencies can use these results not only to plan removal efforts but also to evaluate and adapt their current mitigation efforts.

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Lessons Learned from the Water Producer Project in the Atlantic Forest, Brazil

Forests ◽

10.3390/f10111031 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 10 (11) ◽

pp. 1031 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Ricardo A. G. Viani ◽

Henrique Bracale ◽

Denise Taffarello

Keyword(s):

Atlantic Forest ◽

Forest Restoration ◽

Large Scale ◽

Forest Conservation ◽

Forest Cover ◽

Riparian Forest ◽

Land Use Changes ◽

Project Planning ◽

Lessons Learned ◽

Forest Recovery

Forest and landscape restoration (FLR) is a powerful strategy for large-scale tropical forest recovery, and payment for ecosystem services (PES) is used to support FLR programs and projects on privately-owned land. In this article, we discuss the lessons learned from the Water Producer Project, a pioneer, multiple-stakeholder, and PES-supported FLR project in the Atlantic Forest, south-eastern Brazil. The project was implemented in four landscapes located in two municipalities. Altogether, 41 PES contracts with landowners were signed, resulting in various FLR practices being implemented in a total of 342.4 ha (64.2 ha for riparian forest restoration, 90.8 ha for soil conservation, and 187.4 for forest conservation) of land, which represents 39% of the project goal. As of the end of the project, only 50% (USD 49,250) of the available PES funds had been spent. However, funds spent on project planning, implementation, communication, and monitoring were 12 times greater than those spent on PES. Several challenges restricted the progress and monitoring of the project. The main issue was landowner participation and/or engagement. In terms of lessons learned, we highlight that PES schemes are more complex than initially thought, and that sufficient funding does not guarantee the success of FLR projects. It is essential to promote landowner participation and engagement by considering them key players in FLR projects. Finally, acceptance from landowners was higher and implementation was easier for forest conservation practices that required no land-use changes. Thus, we suggest that similar future projects should focus on targeting private properties in marginal agricultural lands with a high probability of natural regeneration. Alternatively, future projects could focus on lands with remnant forest cover of high conservation value.

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Salinity and Marine Mammal Dynamics in Barataria Basin: Historic Patterns and Modeled Diversion Scenarios

Water ◽

10.3390/w10081015 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 10 (8) ◽

pp. 1015 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Eric White ◽

Francesca Messina ◽

Leland Moss ◽

Ehab Meselhe

Keyword(s):

Mississippi River ◽

Spatial Scales ◽

Bottlenose Dolphins ◽

Compartment Model ◽

Hydrodynamic Models ◽

Sea Levels ◽

Barataria Basin ◽

Freshwater Diversion ◽

Coastal Louisiana ◽

The Impact

Understanding spatiotemporal patterns of salinity in Barataria Basin in coastal Louisiana is important to better understand and manage operations of existing and proposed freshwater and sediment diversions from the Mississippi River into the estuary. In this study, a comprehensive salinity dataset was compiled which covered the entire basin and included data from 1990 through 2015. The data were aggregated into daily mean salinity timeseries across Barataria Basin at a variety of spatial scales and used to analyze historic patterns. Simulations were conducted with two hydrodynamic models, the Integrated Compartment Model (ICM) and Delft3D. The Delft3D model output was overlaid with observed geo-tagged locations of bottlenose dolphins that were sampled from the southwest quadrant of the basin. The ICM simulations were used to assess the impact of existing freshwater and proposed sediment diversion projects which reintroduce riverine water into the estuary. The salinity in the uppermost portions of the basin is sensitive primarily to the existing freshwater diversion, whereas additional flows from a proposed sediment diversion result in additional freshening. The lowermost region of the basin is most sensitive to the proposed sediment diversion; however, the magnitude varies by diverted flow volumes and assumed sea levels in the Gulf of Mexico.

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Global Dispersant Approvals in Asia Pacific – Current Status and On Going Challenges

International Oil Spill Conference Proceedings ◽

10.7901/2169-3358-2017.1.657 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 2017 (1) ◽

pp. 657-677

Author(s):

Thomas Coolbaugh ◽

Geeva Varghese ◽

Lau Siau Li

Keyword(s):

Large Scale ◽

Oil And Gas ◽

Oil And Gas Industry ◽

Lessons Learned ◽

Asia Pacific ◽

Current Status ◽

Gas Industry ◽

Dispersed Oil ◽

Regulatory Perspective ◽

Oil Spill Response

ABSTRACT Following the Macondo Incident, the international oil and gas industry spent significant time and effort analyzing lessons learned and implementing key projects to ensure that critical response and preparedness issues that were identified are addressed to improve response capabilities. The Global Dispersant Stockpile (GDS) was established as part of a post-Macondo Joint Industry Project through Oil Spill Response Limited (OSRL), recognizing that delivery of sufficient quantities of dispersant is a key element for a successful dispersant operation, especially during the initial phases of a large scale response to an event such as a subsea well blowout. Taking into account the global approval status and proven effectiveness on a range of crude oils, three key oil dispersants, Finasol® OSR 52 (Total), Corexit® EC9500A (Nalco) and Slickgone® NS (Dasic) were selected for the Global Dispersant Stockpile. A total of 5,000 m3 of these dispersants are now stored and ready to be deployed from five strategically positioned global locations. For example, sizable volumes of two of these products (total volume = 700 m3) are located at OSRL’s response base in Singapore, which can be quickly mobilized to support a response in the Asia Pacific region. An ongoing effort associated with the management of the GDS is to enable the pre-approval of at least one of the three products for countries in the region where spill response may be required. At present, this is not the case in the region for a variety of reasons, e.g., toxicity concerns and biodegradation processes of dispersed oil. A particularly cautious approach by regulatory authorities following the Macondo incident, coupled with a number of other specific regional concerns, has exacerbated the issue of obtaining and maintaining dispersant approvals in the region. The aim of this paper is to identify and discuss the existing regulatory framework governing the dispersant product approval process and dispersant use authorization for countries in Asia Pacific. The paper will detail the present status of regulations related to dispersant use for a number of countries in the region, the potential challenges associated with achieving permissions in countries with no regulations and a discussion of strategies to address identified obstacles. Additionally the activities that are being undertaken to expand regulatory approvals will also be addressed. It is anticipated that a greater understanding of the reasoning behind the GDS will facilitate a positive regulatory perspective and the potential for dispersant pre-approval in the region.

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Evaluation of an OBCE Conversion Contract in a Large-scale Oil and Gas Project

MATEC Web of Conferences ◽

10.1051/matecconf/202031202006 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 312 ◽

pp. 02006

Author(s):

Ruveyda Komurlu ◽

Akin Er

Keyword(s):

Large Scale ◽

Oil And Gas ◽

Oil And Gas Industry ◽

Lessons Learned ◽

Project Schedule ◽

Gas Industry ◽

Maximum Benefit ◽

Set Up ◽

Distinguishing Features

Billion-dollar investments are quite common in oil and gas industry and owners generally prefer engineering, procurement, construction (EPC) contracts since they would like to minimize their risks and guarantee the most consistent project cost and shortest timeline scheme. Considering the size of contracts, owners are unsurprisingly seeking an ideal tender awarding method to avoid deviation from project schedule or budget and get the maximum benefit for them. They may prefer to award the EPC contract directly (i), have a front-end engineering design (FEED) study done first and award the EPC contract afterwards (ii), or set up a convertible contract and convert it to EPC after an open book cost estimate (OBCE) process (iii). It is a question of concern which option for large-scale oil and gas projects is the most favourable. As a case study, outcomes of a project which was administrated with a conversion type of contract will be reviewed in detail, and a number of principles based on lessons learned will be listed. Thus, the authors aim to provide a verifying approach for the interpretation of EPC conversion type contract management based on analysis of the distinguishing features of large-scale oil and gas projects.

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Experiences With and Lessons Learned From Developing, Implementing, and Evaluating a Support Program for Older Hearing Aid Users and Their Communication Partners in the Hearing Aid Dispensing Setting

American Journal of Audiology ◽

10.1044/2020_aja-19-00072 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 29 (3S) ◽

pp. 638-647 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Janine F. J. Meijerink ◽

Marieke Pronk ◽

Sophia E. Kramer

Keyword(s):

Large Scale ◽

Hearing Aid ◽

Critical Discussion ◽

Lessons Learned ◽

Research Note ◽

Support Program ◽

Large Sample Size ◽

Long Term Effects ◽

Communication Program ◽

Communication Partners

Purpose The SUpport PRogram (SUPR) study was carried out in the context of a private academic partnership and is the first study to evaluate the long-term effects of a communication program (SUPR) for older hearing aid users and their communication partners on a large scale in a hearing aid dispensing setting. The purpose of this research note is to reflect on the lessons that we learned during the different development, implementation, and evaluation phases of the SUPR project. Procedure This research note describes the procedures that were followed during the different phases of the SUPR project and provides a critical discussion to describe the strengths and weaknesses of the approach taken. Conclusion This research note might provide researchers and intervention developers with useful insights as to how aural rehabilitation interventions, such as the SUPR, can be developed by incorporating the needs of the different stakeholders, evaluated by using a robust research design (including a large sample size and a longer term follow-up assessment), and implemented widely by collaborating with a private partner (hearing aid dispensing practice chain).

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Financial and Economic Support of Innovation Processes in the Russian Fuel and Energy Complex

Economics taxes & law ◽

10.26794/1999-849x-2019-12-3-77-85 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 12 (3) ◽

pp. 77-85

Author(s):

L. D. Kapranova ◽

T. V. Pogodina

Keyword(s):

Oil Recovery ◽

Large Scale ◽

Oil And Gas ◽

New Technologies ◽

Innovative Development ◽

Oil Reserves ◽

Energy Complex ◽

Innovation Activities ◽

Substantial Investment ◽

The Government

The subject of the research is the current state of the fuel and energy complex (FEC) that ensures generation of a significant part of the budget and the innovative development of the economy.The purpose of the research was to establish priority directions for the development of the FEC sectors based on a comprehensive analysis of their innovative and investment activities. The dynamics of investment in the fuel and energy sector are considered. It is noted that large-scale modernization of the fuel and energy complex requires substantial investment and support from the government. The results of the government programs of corporate innovative development are analyzed. The results of the research identified innovative development priorities in the power, oil, gas and coal sectors of the fuel and energy complex. The most promising areas of innovative development in the oil and gas sector are the technologies of enhanced oil recovery; the development of hard-to-recover oil reserves; the production of liquefied natural gas and its transportation. In the power sector, the prospective areas are activities aimed at improving the performance reliability of the national energy systems and the introduction of digital technologies. Based on the research findings, it is concluded that the innovation activities in the fuel and energy complex primarily include the development of new technologies, modernization of the FEC technical base; adoption of state-of-the-art methods of coal mining and oil recovery; creating favorable economic conditions for industrial extraction of hard-to-recover reserves; transition to carbon-free fuel sources and energy carriers that can reduce energy consumption and cost as well as reducing the negative FEC impact on the environment.

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