Long-Term Fate and Persistence of Oil from the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill: Lessons Learned or History Repeated?

2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul D. Boehm ◽  
David S. Page ◽  
John S. Brown ◽  
Jerry M. Neff ◽  
Erich Gundlach
Keyword(s):  
Oil Spills ◽  
Gulf Of Alaska ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Subsurface Water ◽  
Intertidal Sediments ◽  
Exxon Valdez ◽  
Weathering Processes ◽  
Rapid Removal ◽  
Or History

ABSTRACT For over 20 years, scientists have studied the shorelines of Prince William Sound (PWS) to understand the distribution, fate, persistence, and bioavailability of Exxon Valdez oil residues that stranded on the shore in 1989. Shoreline surveys in 1989 found that approximately 783 km (16%) of the 4,800 km of the shoreline in PWS, Alaska, and another 1,300 km (13%) of the roughly 10,000 km of shoreline in the western Gulf of Alaska were oiled to varying degrees. The remaining buried subsurface oil (SSO) has been observed on the shorelines in the middle and upper tide zones of a small fraction of the shores where it was originally documented in 1991. Few locations remain with any significant SSO, but the presence of these SSO residues (SSORs) continues to support the hypothesis of continuing harm to wildlife. Our most recent surveys, from 2007–2009, found SSOR in only isolated patches on a very small percentage of shoreline. They were sequestered and largely isolated from the natural weathering processes that would result in their complete and rapid removal. The SSORs are highly weathered and are not accessible or bioavailable to wildlife that forage on the shore. These findings confirm the lessons learned from all previous crude oil spills: 1) weathered SSOR can be sequestered for decades in intertidal sediments at locations where the subsurface water flow required for erosion, dissolution, and biodegradation of the oil is low 2) sequestration limits the exposure of biota to the potentially harmful fractions of the SSO.

DAMAGE ASSESSMENT IN COASTAL HABITATS: LESSONS LEARNED FROM EXXON VALDEZ

1993 ◽  
Vol 1993 (1) ◽  
pp. 695-697 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas A. Dean ◽  
Lyman McDonald ◽  
Michael S. Stekoll ◽  
Richard R. Rosenthal
Keyword(s):  
Optimal Design ◽  
Oil Spill ◽  
Damage Assessment ◽  
Oil Spills ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Exxon Valdez ◽  
Before And After ◽  
And Control ◽  
Alternative Designs ◽  
The Impact

ABSTRACT This paper examines alternative designs for the monitoring and assessment of damages of environmental impacts such as oil spills. The optimal design requires sampling at pairs of impacted (oiled) and control (unoiled) sites both before and after the event. However, this design proved impractical in evaluating impacts of the Exxon Valdez oil spill on nearshore subtidal communities, and may be impractical for future monitoring. An alternative design is discussed in which sampling is conducted at pairs of control and impact sites only after the impact.

scholarly journals Long-Term Ecological Impacts from Oil Spills: Comparison of Exxon Valdez, Hebei Spirit, and Deepwater Horizon

2020 ◽  
Vol 54 (11) ◽  
pp. 6456-6467 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mace G. Barron ◽  
Deborah N. Vivian ◽  
Ron A. Heintz ◽  
Un Hyuk Yim
Keyword(s):  
Oil Spills ◽  
Deepwater Horizon ◽  
Ecological Impacts ◽  
Exxon Valdez

LONG-TERM WILDLIFE OPERATIONS: ADAPTATIONS TO TRADITIONAL INCIDENT COMMAND (OR ICS) STRUCTURE. A CASE STUDY OF THE SS JACOB LUCKENBACH.*

2005 ◽  
Vol 2005 (1) ◽  
pp. 479-483 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yvonne Najah Addassi ◽  
Kathleen Jennings ◽  
Michael Ziccardi ◽  
Julie Yamamoto ◽  
Steve Hampton
Keyword(s):  
Oil Spills ◽  
Weather Prediction ◽  
Winter Season ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Coast Guard ◽  
Electronic Data Collection ◽  
Incident Command ◽  
Continuous Release ◽  
Key Species

ABSTRACT From 2001–2002, oiled birds were found along 220 miles of California's central coastline, with more than 2,000 birds recovered and transported for care. No significant slicks or other obvious sources of oil were observed. Response activities were coordinated to address a prolonged wildlife event, rather than proceeding as a typical short-term oil spill response. This event was part of a long pattern of repeat “mystery” oil spills in this region that puzzled investigators for 10 years, most believing the oil resulted from illegal dumping; but when the 2001/2002 event extended well beyond the winter season, investigators looked deeper. After an extensive investigation by state and federal agencies, the sunken vessel, SS Jacob Luckenbach was identified. A six month, $19 million, multi-agency response operation was undertaken by the U.S. Coast Guard with operations concluding October 2002. To address the 11-month wildlife response for the 2001/2002 season, the Incident Command Structure was modified to address the unique needs of this event, including: activation and deactivation criteria for beach searches; weather prediction for oil release and animal stranding patterns; hybridization of field team functions; changing response priorities for key species; and long-term staffing, communication and coordination among the multiple agencies. Spill-specific policies and protocols were established, and information was made available to remote personnel through a website. On-going staff debriefs were conducted and adjustments implemented. Based on lessons learned, California's Wildlife Operations Plan is being revised and an electronic data collection system is being implemented to streamline animal tracking. Although most response organizations are structured to respond to “batch” spills, with hundreds of aging sunken vessels along the California coast alone and as the continuous release from the TV Prestige demonstrated, organizational modifications may be necessary to adequately prepare for and respond to the more unusual, but potentially growing risk of long-term, intermittent releases in the off-shore environment.

ASSESS INTERTIDAL IMPACTS: LESSONS LEARNED FROM 11 YEARS OF MONITORING IN PRINCE WILLIAM SOUND1

2005 ◽  
Vol 2005 (1) ◽  
pp. 931-936
Author(s):  
Douglas A. Coats ◽  
Gary Shigenaka
Keyword(s):  
Oil Spill ◽  
Temporal Trends ◽  
Monitoring Program ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Reference Sites ◽  
Exxon Valdez ◽  
Equivalent Number ◽  
Initial Sampling ◽  
Using Data

ABSTRACT “How many samples do we need?” and “Where should we collect them?” are questions common to most field monitoring programs. They are especially compelling when an oil spill impinges on a coastline and an intertidal monitoring program must be rapidly implemented to assess impacts. Moreover, these initial sampling decisions profoundly affect the ultimate validity of the assessment study. While it is important to avoid squandering limited resources by oversampling, an undersized study is equally wasteful if it cannot reliably discern significant impacts and produce useful results. All else being equal, the power to detect change in an ecosystem is dictated by its inherent variability. Variability estimates were computed for a variety of intertidal assemblages using data collected within Prince William Sound over eleven years, following the Exxon Valdez oil spill. The sample-size recommendations that emerge from these power analyses demonstrate that spill and cleanup impacts to most intertidal taxa can be reliably detected using four to six replicate samples collected at three or more treatment sites, and at an equivalent number of reference sites. They also demonstrate that collecting more than eight replicate samples within each site does little to increase the power to detect differences in mean populations. Analogously, “parallelism” tests on multi-year data provide a reliable means of quantifying long-term recovery in intertidal populations following an oil spill. Parallelism tests examine temporal trends in mean abundance at impacted sites relative to reference sites. However, the ability to detect major recolonization events with parallelism tests varies widely depending on the taxa being tested. For example, the marked recolonization in Fucus and epifaunal invertebrates that was experienced four years after the Exxon Valdez spill could have been detected by sampling at only two reference and two impact sites. In contrast, infaunal populations exhibit greater variability, making detection of nonparallel trends difficult without sampling at least six reference and six impacted sites.

Maximizing Outcomes in Group Treatment of Aphasia: Lessons Learned From a Community-Based Center

2014 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 100-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Darlene Williamson
Keyword(s):  
Group Treatment ◽  
Treatment Protocol ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Group Program ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Multiple Treatment ◽  
Use Of Technology ◽  
Communication Impairments ◽  
Treatment Settings

Given the potential of long term intervention to positively influence speech/language and psychosocial domains, a treatment protocol was developed at the Stroke Comeback Center which addresses communication impairments arising from chronic aphasia. This article presents the details of this program including the group purposes and principles, the use of technology in groups, and the applicability of a group program across multiple treatment settings.

Periodic monitoring of vampire bats and rabies: a new framework for animal restoration projects in the Neotropics

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fernando Gonçalves ◽  
Daniel G. Streicker ◽  
Mauro Galetti
Keyword(s):  
Disease Transmission ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Multidisciplinary Teams ◽  
Risk Area ◽  
Food Web Structure ◽  
Land Bridge ◽  
High Risk Area ◽  
Restoration Project ◽  
Vampire Bats

Nowadays, restoration project might lead to increased public engagement and enthusiasm for biodiversity and is receiving increased media attention in major newspapers, TED talks and the scientific literature. However, empirical research on restoration project is rare, fragmented, and geographically biased and long-term studies that monitor indirect and unexpected effects are needed to support future management decisions especially in the Neotropical area. Changes in animal population dynamics and community composition following species (re)introduction may have unanticipated consequences for a variety of downstream ecosystem processes, including food web structure, predator-prey systems and infectious disease transmission. Recently, an unprecedented study in Brazil showed changes in vampire bat feeding following a rewilding project and further transformed the land-bridge island into a high-risk area for rabies transmission. Due the lessons learned from ongoing project, we present a novel approach on how to anticipate, monitor, and mitigate the vampire bats and rabies in rewilding projects. We pinpoint a series of precautions and the need for long-term monitoring of vampire bats and rabies responses to rewilding projects and highlighted the importance of multidisciplinary teams of scientist and managers focusing on prevention educational program of rabies risk transmitted by bats. In addition, monitoring the relative abundance of vampire bats, considering reproductive control by sterilization and oral vaccines that autonomously transfer among bats would reduce the probability, size and duration of rabies outbreaks. The rewilding assessment framework presented here responds to calls to better integrate the science and practice of rewilding and also could be used for long-term studying of bat-transmitted pathogen in the Neotropical area as the region is considered a geographic hotspots of “missing bat zoonoses”.

Long-term Piloting Of Osmotic MBR For Potable Reuse: Performance, Life-Cycle Assessment, and Lessons Learned

2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 (14) ◽  
pp. 830-854
Author(s):  
Tzahi Y Cath ◽  
Ryan W Holloway ◽  
Leslie Miller-Robbie ◽  
Mehul Patel ◽  
Jennifer R Stokes ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Potable Reuse

scholarly journals Oil Pollution Affects the Central Metabolism of Keystone Vachellia (Acacia) Trees

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (12) ◽  
pp. 6660
Author(s):  
Marco Ferrante ◽  
Anuma Dangol ◽  
Shoshana Didi-Cohen ◽  
Gidon Winters ◽  
Vered Tzin ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Oil Spills ◽  
Oil Pollution ◽  
Keystone Species ◽  
Desert Ecosystem ◽  
Arid Environments ◽  
Central Metabolism ◽  
Adult Trees ◽  
Metabolite Profiles ◽  
One Year

Vachellia (formerly Acacia) trees are native to arid environments in Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, where they often support the local animal and plant communities acting as keystone species. The aim of this study was to examine whether oil pollution affected the central metabolism of the native keystone trees Vachellia tortilis (Forssk.) and V. raddiana (Savi), as either adults or seedlings. The study was conducted in the Evrona Nature Reserve, a desert ecosystem in southern Israel where two major oil spills occurred in 1975 and in 2014. Leaf samples were collected to analyze the central metabolite profiles from oil-polluted and unpolluted adult trees and from Vachellia seedlings growing in oil-polluted and unpolluted soils in an outdoor setup. We found that oil pollution had a stronger effect on one-year-old seedlings than on adult trees, reducing the levels of amino acids, sugars, and organic acids. While adult trees are mildly affected by oil pollution, the effects on young seedlings can cause a long-term reduction in the population of these keystone desert trees, ultimately threatening this entire ecosystem.

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