scholarly journals Determination of Oil Spill Chemical Concentrations in Nearshore Matrices

Author(s):  
Larissa Montas ◽  
Alesia Ferguson ◽  
Kristina Mena ◽  
Helena Solo-Gabriele ◽  
Claire B. Paris

ABSTRACT Marine oil spill incidents create concerns about human health risks, particularly in nearshore locations such as beaches used for recreation. To improve the timeliness of risk estimates during an oil spill, we need to expand modelling capacity for oil spill chemicals (OSCs) from predictions for chemical bulk measurements such as Total Petroleum Hydrocarbons (TPH) to predictions of individual concentrations of the more toxic Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAH)s. The objective of this study is to establish a relationship for TPH and PAH nearshore sampling concentration values with the oil mass landing and TPH hindcast from a 3D Hydrodynamic Fate and Transport Model (3D-FTM) for a past oil spill. The overall goal is to use this information to expand current modeling capacities to predict concentration distributions for individual PAHs as a starting point for health risk assessment. During Phase I of this study, historic sampling data for various matrices (weathered oil, seawater and sediments) were used to evaluate PAH concentration distributions within time-space specific categories. The categories corresponded to samples collected prior to nearshore oiling, post nearshore oiling and at no time impacted by oil as predicted by historic oil spill trajectories. For matrices within each category, concentration frequency distributions and concentration patterns were generated for a subset of PAHs. Results show differences in PAH concentration patterns within each matrix and for each category. Concentration frequency distributions for most PAHs in each category were log-normally distributed. Phase II is ongoing. Here we analyze PAH and TPH concentrations measured from surface weathered oil slick samples collected at the time of the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) oil spill. Preliminary results show that concentrations for a subset of PAHs in weathered oil slicks correlate well with TPH concentrations (R2=0.76). We are collocating the historic environmental sampling data with the output from the Oil-Connectivity Modelling System (Oil-CMS). The relationship between measured and model predicted TPH is explored by comparing values for samples that coincide in time and space with the model's particles. A subsequent step is to use output of the oil-CMS in combination with the physical and chemical properties for each PAH to predict concentration distributions for individual PAHs. The overarching goal is to improve risk estimates and, therefore, better guide public health decision-making.

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (7) ◽  
pp. 732
Author(s):  
Haiwen Han ◽  
Shengmao Huang ◽  
Shuang Liu ◽  
Jingjing Sha ◽  
Xianqing Lv

Oil spills have immediate adverse effects on marine ecological functions. Accurate assessment of the damage caused by the oil spill is of great significance for the protection of marine ecosystems. In this study the observation data of Chaetoceros and shellfish before and after the Penglai 19-3 oil spill in the Bohai Sea were analyzed by the least-squares fitting method and radial basis function (RBF) interpolation. Besides, an oil transport model is provided which considers both the hydrodynamic mechanism and monitoring data to accurately simulate the spatial and temporal distribution of total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPH) in the Bohai Sea. It was found that the abundance of Chaetoceros and shellfish exposed to the oil spill decreased rapidly. The biomass loss of Chaetoceros and shellfish are 7.25×1014~7.28×1014 ind and 2.30×1012~2.51×1012 ind in the area with TPH over 50 mg/m3 during the observation period, respectively. This study highlights the evaluation of ecological resource loss caused by the oil spill, which is useful for the protection and restoration of the biological resources following the oil spill.


2000 ◽  
Vol 151 (12) ◽  
pp. 502-507
Author(s):  
Christian Küchli

Are there any common patterns in the transition processes from traditional and more or less sustainable forest management to exploitative use, which can regularly be observed both in central Europe and in the countries of the South (e.g. India or Indonesia)? Attempts were made with a time-space-model to typify those force fields, in which traditional sustainable forest management is undermined and is then transformed into a modern type of sustainable forest management. Although it is unlikely that the history of the North will become the future of the South, the glimpse into the northern past offers a useful starting point for the understanding of the current situation in the South, which in turn could stimulate the debate on development. For instance, the patterns which stand behind the conflicts on forest use in the Himalayas are very similar to the conflicts in the Alps. In the same way, the impact of socio-economic changes on the environment – key word ‹globalisation› – is often much the same. To recognize comparable patterns can be very valuable because it can act as a stimulant for the search of political, legal and technical solutions adapted to a specific situation. For the global community the realization of the way political-economic alliances work at the head of the ‹globalisationwave›can only signify to carry on trying to find a common language and understanding at the negotiation tables. On the lee side of the destructive breaker it is necessary to conserve and care for what survived. As it was the case in Switzerland these forest islands could once become the germination points for the genesis of a cultural landscape, where close-to-nature managed forests will constitute an essential element.


1979 ◽  
Vol 1979 (1) ◽  
pp. 649-652 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivan M. Lissauer ◽  
Donald L. Murphy

ABSTRACT The methods used to forecast the movement of spilled oil have not changed significantly since the Argo Merchant spill. Little has been done to improve the deficiencies brought to light during this incident. Some of the deficiencies in the state-of-the-art are examined here, particularly those related to our incomplete knowledge of the physical mechanisms involved in oil spill movement. A basic framework for the development of an improved forecasting system is presented. It is based on the integration of a horizontal transport model, an evaporation model, and a vertical dispersion model.


2014 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce A. Seaman ◽  
Amanda L. Wilsker ◽  
Dennis R. Young

AbstractIn an era of dramatic financial challenges, pressure is growing for U.S. nonprofit organizations to consolidate. Yet, we know little about the current concentration of the sector and even less about the degree of competition in various nonprofit subsectors. In this paper we offer a detailed analysis of concentration patterns across the sector and analyze variations in these patterns by subsector and metropolitan areas. It is well known that measuring concentration is not identical to assessing effective competition and is but a starting point for a more thorough competitive analysis. An important distinction is made between the concentration of resources within larger subsector organizations and inequality in the distribution of resources across those organizations. Some subsectors may be concentrated yet behave competitively because resources are distributed relatively equally among several large organizations. By contrast, other concentrated subsectors may behave less competitively because resources are very unequally controlled by a few organizations. Understanding the patterns of both concentration and inequality in the nonprofit sector is likely a prerequisite to drawing defensible conclusions about the degrees of competition in the sector and the desirability of further consolidation. This analysis has implications for both public policy and philanthropy. It bears on the issues of whether antitrust policy should be forcefully applied to the nonprofit sector, whether government funding programs should encourage nonprofit consolidation or competition, and whether philanthropic institutions should implore nonprofit organizations to consolidate further or to compete more vigorously.


Author(s):  
Igal Berenshtein ◽  
Shay O’Farrell ◽  
Natalie Perlin ◽  
James N Sanchirico ◽  
Steven A Murawski ◽  
...  

Abstract Major oil spills immensely impact the environment and society. Coastal fishery-dependent communities are especially at risk as their fishing grounds are susceptible to closure because of seafood contamination threat. During the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) disaster for example, vast areas of the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) were closed for fishing, resulting in coastal states losing up to a half of their fishery revenues. To predict the effect of future oil spills on fishery-dependent communities in the GoM, we develop a novel framework that combines a state-of-the-art three-dimensional oil-transport model with high-resolution spatial and temporal data for two fishing fleets—bottom longline and bandit-reel—along with data on the social vulnerability of coastal communities. We demonstrate our approach by simulating spills in the eastern and western GoM, calibrated to characteristics of the DWH spill. We find that the impacts of the eastern and western spills are strongest in the Florida and Texas Gulf coast counties respectively both for the bandit-reel and the bottom longline fleets. We conclude that this multimodal spatially explicit quantitative framework is a valuable management tool for predicting the consequences of oil spills at locations throughout the Gulf, facilitating preparedness and efficient resource allocation for future oil-spill events.


Author(s):  
Peta Mitchell

Since around 1970, and across a broad spectrum of humanities and social sciences disciplines, there has been an ongoing and critical reassessment of the role played by space, place, and geography in the formation and unfolding of human knowledge, subjectivity, and social relations. Starting with the identification of a distinctive “spatial turn” within critical and social theory in the second half of the 20th century, it has become a commonplace to recognize space as being political and as having a particular affective and effective power. A distinctive constellation of socio-technological changes at the start of the 20th century brought the question of space to the critical foreground, and, by the end of the 20th century, a loosely defined and interdisciplinary “spatial theory” had emerged, while a number of fields across the humanities and social sciences had avowedly undergone their own “spatial turns.” More recently, new critical approaches have emerged that foreground the geo- as both a starting point and method for critical analysis as well as new inter-disciplines—namely the geohumanities and spatial humanities—that provide a focus for the range of work being done at the interstices of geography and the humanities. With the rise to ubiquity of geospatial and geolocative technologies since around 2005—and their almost wholesale penetration into everyday life in the global North in the form of the GPS-enabled smartphone—the question of the geo- and its role in locating and mediating human experience, knowledge, and social relations has become ever more salient. In an era where the geo- becomes geolocation, and is increasingly defined by networked relations among humans, digital media, and their locational data traces, new approaches and schools of thought that transect geography, digital media, and critical and cultural theory have once more emerged, constituting what may be thought of as a new, digital spatial turn. Charting the trajectory of the geo- as a key site and mode of critique across and through these often overlapping “spatial turns”—across time, space, and disciplinary boundaries—is itself a work of geolocation.


2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 (1) ◽  
pp. 1772-1783
Author(s):  
Drew Casey ◽  
John Caplis

ABSTRACT As observed during several recent major oil spills, most notably the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, the current regulatory planning standard for mechanical recovery equipment has been often scrutinized as an inadequate means for vessel and facility plan holders to calculate their oil spill equipment needs. Effective Daily Recovery Capacity, or EDRC, was developed during a negotiated rulemaking process following the enactment of the Oil Pollution Act of 1990. During an IOSC 2011 Workshop sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute (API), the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE), and the U.S. Coast Guard, there was general agreement among workshop participants that EDRC is not an accurate planning tool for determining oil spill response equipment needs. In addition, many attendees agreed that EDRC should account for the skimmer system as a whole, not individual skimmer components such as pump nameplate capacity. In 2012, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) and the U.S. Coast Guard initiated and completed a third-party, independent research contract to review the existing EDRC regulations and make recommendations for improving planning standards for mechanical recovery. The contractor's final report methodology is based on oil spill thickness as a fundamental component in calculating mechanical recovery potential, and it emphasizes the importance of response time on-scene and storage for recovered oil. This research provides a more realistic and scientific approach to evaluating skimmer system performance, and more accurately accounts for a wide range of operating conditions and external influences. The federal government, with input from the oil industry, OSRO community, and other interested stakeholders, now has a sound methodology to serve as a starting point for redesigning the current planning standard that more accurately reflects skimmer system performance.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nadia Pinardi ◽  
Augusto Sepp-Neves ◽  
Francesco Trotta ◽  
Antonio Navarra

<p>The current lack of a standardized approach to compute the coastal oil spill hazard due to maritime traffic accidental releases has hindered an accurate estimate of its global impact, which is paramount to manage and intercompare the associated risks. We propose here a hazard estimation approach that is based on ensemble simulations and the extraction of the relevant frequency distributions. We demonstrate that both open ocean and beached oil concentration distributions fit a Weibull curve, a two-parameter fat-tail probability distribution function. The simulation experiments are carried out in all the coastal areas of the Atlantic ocean basin. An indicator that quantify the coastal oil spill hazard is proposed and applied to the study areas.</p>


Author(s):  
Gillian Howell

The idea that “humans are the ones making the music” (Pignato, this volume) is the starting point for reflection upon the factors beyond new technologies that encourage musical innovation. In their core perspectives, Pignato, Peppler, and Kigozi offer illustrations of practices that demonstrate the inseparability of context, informality, and innovation. Context is critical, as different settings afford access to different technologies and produce diverse sociocultural structures. Informality—as a learning style, an approach to engagement, and settings beyond the formal music education institutions—is important for its accommodation of playfulness, open-ended exploration, and improvisation around imposed constraints. I argue that these factors, and the innovative responses that emerge when technologies and creative people converge, are interrelated and multidirectional. Regardless of how advanced our technological capabilities become, innovation and new musical expressions remain products of humans interacting and exploring technological possibilities within a specific time, space, and social environment.


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