Journal
ENVIRONMENTAL POLLUTION
Volume 139, Issue 3, Pages 523-531Publisher
ELSEVIER SCI LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.envpol.2005.05.022
Keywords
microbial mats; oil spills; crude oil degradation; coastal environments; cyanobacteria; aliphatic hydrocarbons; isoprenoid hydrocarbons; aromatic hydrocarbons; dibenzothiophenes; benzohopanes
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The massive oil discharge in the Saudi Arabian coast at the end of the 1991 Gulf War is used here as a natural experiment to study the ability of microbial mats to transform oil residues after major spills. The degree of oil transformation has been evaluated from the analysis of the aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbons by gas chromatography (GC) and GC coupled to mass spectrometry (GC-MS). The oil-polluted microbial mat samples from coastal environments exhibited an intermediate degree of transformation between that observed in superficial and deep sediments. Evaporation, photo-oxidation and water-washing seemed to lead to more effective and rapid elimination of hydrocarbons than cyanobacteria and its associated microorganisms. Furthermore, comparison of some compounds (e.g. regular isoprenoid hydrocarbons or alkylnaphthalenes) in the oil collected in the area after the spill or in the mixtures retained by cyanobacterial growth gave rise to an apparent effect of hydrocarbon preservation in the microbial mat ecosystems. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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