Journal
BIODIVERSITY AND CONSERVATION
Volume 21, Issue 7, Pages 1865-1876Publisher
SPRINGER
DOI: 10.1007/s10531-012-0284-4
Keywords
Deepwater Horizon; Macondo blowout; Deep sea
Funding
- National Science Foundation [0916695]
- Division Of Environmental Biology
- Direct For Biological Sciences [0916695] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
Ask authors/readers for more resources
The 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill was the largest in history outside of warfare and because the spill occurred in the deep sea, its impact on the biota will be difficult to assess. To help address this problem we have created SM (http://speciesmap.org), a web-based application (web app) that allows a user to synthesize data on the oil spill with distributional records and other information on marine species. We have combined satellite image data collected over the course of the oil spill with locality data from historical collection records of fish species in a geographic information system. In doing so, we have created maps to assess which species were potentially in the region of the spill and to what degree their range was exposed to pollution. To evaluate the impact of the spill, we examined and categorized various levels of overlap between the observed surface range of the 2010 spill with collections records for 124 fish species including all 77 endemic to the Gulf of Mexico. More than half of all species examined (including more than half of all endemics) were found to have population records in the region of the spill. SM contains interaction maps for all the species examined and these data can be used to target post-spill collections, to evaluate changes in habitat, and to discover extirpations or extinctions in response to environmental disturbances.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available