British Petroleum Deepwater Horizon Research Articles

Vegetation Impact and Recovery from Oil-Induced Stress on Three Ecologically Distinct Wetland Sites in the Gulf of Mexico

April 20, 2010 marked the start of the British Petroleum Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the largest marine oil spill in US history, which contaminated coastal wetland ecosystems across the northern Gulf of Mexico. We used hyperspectral data from 2010 and 2011 to compare the impact of oil contamination and recovery of coastal wetland vegetation across three ecologically diverse sites: Barataria Bay (saltmarsh), East Bird’s Foot (intermediate/freshwater marsh), and Chandeleur Islands (mangrove-cordgrass barrier islands). Oil impact was measured by comparing wetland pixels along oiled and oil-free shorelines using various spectral indices. We show that the Chandeleur Islands were the most vulnerable to oiling, Barataria Bay had a small but widespread and significant impact, and East Bird’s Foot had negligible impact. A year later, the Chandeleur Islands showed the strongest signs of recovery, Barataria Bay had a moderate recovery, and East Bird’s Foot had only a slight increase in vegetation. Our results indicate that the recovery was at least partially related to the magnitude of the impact such that greater recovery occurred at sites that had greater impact.

Ghosts of the Gulf

The 2010 BP (formerly British Petroleum) Deepwater Horizon (DWH) oil spill was the largest environmental disaster in the history of the United States (Belanger et al. 2010). The Gulf of Mexico is one of the most important and biologically diverse environments in the world — a nursery for thousands of marine species, with numerous endemic organisms inhabiting its warm waters. Gulf seafood is an important source of food for millions of people in North America, and, since marine species migrate by following the Gulf Stream, people throughout Europe also rely on these fish for protein. From an ecological and economic standpoint, the DWH spill could not have occurred in a more disastrous location. The tremendous amount of oil that was spilled, estimated at 206 million gallons, resulted in an immediate kill zone that measured greater than 200 kilometers wide (Rabalais 2011; Ramseur and Hagerty 2013). It wiped out enormous numbers of marine life. During the cleanup, BP exacerbated the spill’s toxicity and reach by utilizing upward of 2 million gallons of chemical dispersants such as Corexit 9500, which made the effluents as much as 52 percent more toxic than the oil itself (RicoMartinez, Snell, and Shearer 2013); it also allowed them to be more easily dispersed. According to the Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDSs) for Corexit 9500, produced by the chemical manufacturer Nalco, no toxicity studies were conducted prior to its use in the gulf (Kujawinski et al. 2011). However, numerous earlier toxicology studies found such dispersants to be teratological1 to marine wildlife and possibly

Long-term psychological outcomes in older adults after disaster: relationships to religiosity and social support

Objectives: Natural disasters are associated with catastrophic losses. Disaster survivors return to devastated communities and rebuild homes or relocate permanently, although the long-term psychological consequences are not well understood. The authors examined predictors of psychological outcomes in 219 residents of disaster-affected communities in south Louisiana.Method: Current coastal residents with severe property damage from the 2005 Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and exposure to the 2010 British Petroleum Deepwater Horizon oil spill were compared and contrasted with former coastal residents and an indirectly affected control group. Participants completed measures of storm exposure and stressors, religiosity, perceived social support, and mental health.Results: Non-organizational religiosity was a significant predictor of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in bivariate and multivariate logistic regressions. Follow-up analyses revealed that more frequent participation in non-organizational religious behaviors was associated with a heightened risk of PTSD. Low income and being a coastal fisher were significant predictors of depression symptoms in bivariate and multivariate models. Perceived social support had a protective effect for all mental health outcomes, which also held for symptoms of depression and GAD in multivariate models.Conclusion: People who experienced recent and severe trauma related to natural and technological disasters are at risk for adverse psychological outcomes in the years after these events. Individuals with low income, low social support, and high levels of non-organizational religiosity are also at greater risk. Implications of these data for current views on the post-disaster psychological reactions and the development of age-sensitive interventions to promote long-term recovery are discussed.

Detection of Salt Marsh Vegetation Stress and Recovery after the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in Barataria Bay, Gulf of Mexico Using AVIRIS Data

The British Petroleum Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico was the biggest oil spill in US history. To assess the impact of the oil spill on the saltmarsh plant community, we examined Advanced Visible Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS) data flown over Barataria Bay, Louisiana in September 2010 and August 2011. Oil contamination was mapped using oil absorption features in pixel spectra and used to examine impact of oil along the oiled shorelines. Results showed that vegetation stress was restricted to the tidal zone extending 14 m inland from the shoreline in September 2010. Four indexes of plant stress and three indexes of canopy water content all consistently showed that stress was highest in pixels next to the shoreline and decreased with increasing distance from the shoreline. Index values along the oiled shoreline were significantly lower than those along the oil-free shoreline. Regression of index values with respect to distance from oil showed that in 2011, index values were no longer correlated with proximity to oil suggesting that the marsh was on its way to recovery. Change detection between the two dates showed that areas denuded of vegetation after the oil impact experienced varying degrees of re-vegetation in the following year. This recovery was poorest in the first three pixels adjacent to the shoreline. This study illustrates the usefulness of high spatial resolution airborne imaging spectroscopy to map actual locations where oil from the spill reached the shore and then to assess its impacts on the plant community. We demonstrate that post-oiling trends in terms of plant health and mortality could be detected and monitored, including recovery of these saltmarsh meadows one year after the oil spill.

The Genesis of a Sensibility and the Gulf Coast Oil Disaster of 2010

Intimate biographical, urgent environmental, and political reflections come together in this aesthetically refined depth psychological excursion beyond self and subjectivity to the transpersonal field of the lumen naturae. From a fateful family car accident through reveries of childhood, school, Boy Scouts, and the influence of a local earth mother and a nature guru sent by Providence, the evolution of a Midwestern child's keen eye and ardent affection for the natural world proceeds tumultuously from art school and a crucial dissociative crisis to a singularly enchanted morning of bird watching on the Louisiana Gulf Coast. There the jarring impact of the explosive British Petroleum's Deepwater Horizon drilling rig on the same adult personality 30 hours later and fifty miles off shore is elaborated with no small sense of horror. Colorful observations of birds, insects and plant species, habitats and locales, personal dreams and key excerpts from an old Ecuador travel journal are subtly interwoven, then highlighted by the collectively significant proclamation of fierce political will by a powerful black woman to her countless earthly children in for an era torn with war and ecological outrages. This prose poem seeks throughout to characterize the unique position of our reflective human consciousness poised between the dazzling if troubled extended world and the inwardly receding expanse of psychic space brimming with living images and struck through with myriad scintillae, the rods and cones of the imaginal retina with which we see and derive our capacity for wonder.

Reassuring or risky: the presentation of seafood safety in the aftermath of the British Petroleum Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill.

The BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill was enormously newsworthy; coverage interlaced discussions of health, economic, and environmental impacts and risks. We analyzed 315 news articles that considered Gulf seafood safety from the year following the spill. We explored reporting trends, risk presentation, message source, stakeholder perspectives on safety, and framing of safety messages. Approximately one third of articles presented risk associated with seafood consumption as a standalone issue, rather than in conjunction with environmental or economic risks. Government sources were most frequent and their messages were largely framed as reassuring as to seafood safety. Discussions of prevention were limited to short-term, secondary prevention approaches. These data demonstrate a need for risk communication in news coverage of food safety that addresses the larger risk context, primary prevention, and structural causes of risk.