Abstracts for Oral Presentations
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Abstracts for Oral Presentations Organized by Session * Student presenter Session 001: Modeling for Synthesis – Integrated Assessment of Ocean Environment, Ecosystems, Human Health, and Socioeconomics Towards Integrated Assessment Modeling of the Long-Term Impacts of Oil Spills T. Fiddaman1, GoMRI Core 7B Organizing Committee 1Ventana Systems, Inc., Bozeman, MT Through the efforts of the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI) great progress has been made in advancing the scientific understanding of oil spills. One objective of GoMRI synthesis and legacy efforts has been to integrate this new knowledge and develop a conceptual framework that could be used to address long-term societal questions about oil spill impacts. Given the breadth of the questions to be addressed, the assessment was separated into four knowledge domains (ocean environment, ecosystems, socio-economics and human health) from which a systems dynamics approach was used to develop the conceptual framework. A series of online workshops solicited expert input, defining the state-of-the-art within each knowledge domain and connecting models to stakeholder questions. This exercise resulted in causal loop diagrams and an initial quantitative stock and flow model from which the interconnectivity of the system could be better understood. Mapping the extent of existing models to the underlying system structure indicates that the system naturally separates in two tiers, ocean environment and ecosystems versus socio-economics and human health. The systems and existing models within each of these tiers are intertwined with each other. As a result, the existing detailed ocean environment and ecosystem models can be used to drive rich human health and socio-economic scenarios. Although data gaps are identified in all four model domains, the socio-economics and human health domains are the least developed and require considerable future work in order to develop reasonable quantitative models that can be used for longer term decision-making Integrated Model System for Oil Spill Natural Resource Damage and Risk Assessments D. French-McCay RPS Ocean Science, South Kingstown, RI The integrated model system SIMAP (Spill Impact Model Application Package) has been developed over several decades for natural resource damage assessments, as well as for risk analyses evaluating response alternatives and consequences from oil spills. The oil transport and fate model of SIMAP uses a Lagrangian approach, in which sublots and chemical components of the released pollutant mass are followed in space and time as they are transported, dispersed, and physically/chemically changed (e.g., entrainment, droplet/particulate formation, dissolution, volatilization, degradation, adsorption), accessing pathways of stressors and their concentrations. Results from meteorological and hydrodynamic models are used as inputs of winds and currents. An integrated Lagrangian activity-based exposure model tracks the exposure history (i.e., concentrations of each chemical component, and temperature and light exposures, over time) of aquatic biota to oil and the mixture of chemicals throughout the affected environment using behavioral information and accounting for physical transport of plankton by currents. The effects of the integrated exposures are evaluated with a pharmacokinetic-based toxicity model, accounting for the relative composition of the chemical mixture, as well as the influence of temperature and duration of exposure on the dose-response relationship. Wildlife effects are evaluated via exposure to floating oil and atmospheric emissions. Long-term losses, as well as restoration/mitigation needs, are quantified using population modeling and food web * Student presenter modeling. Socio-economic impacts are based on quantified injuries from and physical exposures to oil, considering recreational losses, catch losses, hunting losses, wildlife-viewing losses and lost non-use values. Applications of the integrated system and its parts include development of regulatory models for NRDA and spill cases such as the North Cape and Deepwater Horizon oil spills. Regional Earth System Modeling for Integrated Prediction of Hazards and Societal Impact Over the Gulf of Mexico S. S. Chen1, T. Özgökmen2 1University of Washington, Seattle, WA, 2University of Miami, Miami, FL The air-sea-land interactions are a key to improving environmental prediction for high-impact weather and hazards over the Gulf of Mexico. Oil spill and hurricanes are two examples that have shown the urgent need for integrated, coupled atmosphere-wave-ocean-land modeling and accurate forecasting. This study presents the development and applications of a regional, coupled Earth System modeling system and its new capabilities and implications for addressing societal impacts. A Coupled Modeling System for Simulating Oil-Biological-Sediment Interactions in the Ocean S. L. Morey1, E. Chassignet2, D. Dukhovskoy2, C. Harris3, V. Coles4, M. Stukel2, R. Hetland5, K. Thyng5, T. Hsu6, A. Manning7, O. Mason2, L. Ye6, L. Cui3, X. Chen2, J. Wang4 1Florida A&M University, Tallahassee, FL, 2Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, 3Virginia Institute of Marine Science, Gloucester Point, VA, 4University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, Cambridge, MD, 5Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, 6University of Delaware, Newark, DE, 7HR Wallingford, Wallingford, United Kingdom Over the past decade, numerous studies have yielded a better understanding of the processes governing the eventual fate of oil released in the ocean. Oil spill models have been developed with parameterizations simulating processes such as sedimentation, biodegradation, and atmospheric weathering for removing oil from the system. However, such models are limited in their ability to fully simulate pathways for hydrocarbons moving through seawater into sediments and the marine ecosystem. The Consortium for Simulation of Oil-Microbial Interactions in the Ocean (CSOMIO) has developed a modeling system that dynamically couples components for simulating ocean hydrodynamics, oil transport, dispersion and weathering, oil-mineral aggregate (OMA) formation, flocculation and settling, and the lower trophic level marine ecosystem. This CSOMIO Coupled Model is an adaptation and extension of the Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere-Wave-Sediment Transport (COAWST) modeling system. A biogeochemical modeling component incorporating a microbial model is implemented in the system and adapted for the presence of hydrocarbons. The sediment transport component of COAWST (the Community Sediment Transport Modeling System, CSTMS) is modified to include computationally efficient flocculation parameterizations for OMAs developed from laboratory experiments. The ocean modeling component of COAWST (the Regional Ocean Modeling System, ROMS) is modified to simulate three-dimensional oil transport and compositional changes (weathering). These modeling components are linked together using a two-way Lagrangian-Eulerian mapping technique allowing for interaction between all of the modeling components for tracking of hydrocarbons from a source blowout to deposition in sediment, microbial degradation, and evaporation while being transported through the ocean, and can be run offline to increase computational speed. * Student presenter A 3-D Fate and Transport Model Explains Measured Changes in PAH Concentrations from Weathered Oil L. Montas1, C. B. Paris2, A. Ferguson3, K. Mena4, H. Solo-Gabriele1 1University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL, 2University of Miami, Miami, FL, 3North Carolina A&T University, Greensboro, NC, 4University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, El Paso, TX Determining the concentration of oil spill chemicals (OSCs) of concern in human exposure zones, such as beaches and other nearshore environments, is a primary step in assessing the health risk due to marine oil spills. Crude oil contains thousands of chemicals each with varying toxicity to marine ecology and/or human health. Once spilled to the marine environment, weathering processes alter the proportion of higher to lower toxicity chemicals in the oil. Increasing the certainty of risk estimates requires expanding current knowledge to include predictions for the individual concentrations of the more toxic OSCs, such as Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs). We hypothesize that PAH concentration changes in oil pre- landfall are related to the weathering history from its “age at sea”, which could be predicted by an oil fate and transport model. Here we integrate PAH and TPH concentrations measured from surface weathered oil slick samples collected at the time of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill with a 3D oil spill module of the Connectivity Modeling System (CMS). The PAH and TPH measurements were statistically processed to determine overall changes with respect to the raw oil, and the CMS output was used to estimate “age at sea” for the weathered oil slick samples. Our goal is to test our hypothesis that “age at sea” can be used to explain the variability in measured PAH concentrations. Preliminary results show that concentrations for a subset of PAHs in weathered oil slicks correlate well with TPH concentrations (R2=0.76). We further examined the oil-CMS predictions of oil concentrations coincident with each sample’s location and time to derive a correlation between “age at sea” and spatial and temporal variability observed in measured concentrations. Ultimately, the output of the oil-CMS will be used to predict concentration distributions