MODELING AS A SCIENTIFIC TOOL IN NRDA FOR OIL AND CHEMICAL SPILLS

摘要

In natural resource damage assessments, as well as in analyses of response alternatives, modeling is a useful and effective scientific tool in assessing injury and risk. Often field data documenting spill impacts are incomplete, such that injuries are underestimated or impossible to assess. In order to quantify impacts using field observations, comprehensive sampling of affected biota is needed in both exposed and unaffected areas. Because marine organisms are so patchy in their distribution, large numbers of stations and samples within stations are needed to accurately map abundance. Such extensive sampling of all (or even selected) species affected is often not feasible, given the rapidity at which the evidence disappears (by scavenging of killed organisms and by migration of animals into the impacted area). What is feasible and cost-effective, is to estimate impacts using existing scientific knowledge of the fates and toxicity of oil components, along with as much site-specific data as is available or feasible to collect. Oil and chemical fates and effects models integrate this information into a form that may be calibrated to and/or verified with field data, such that injuries are quantified with a combined field-based and modeling approach.