Interrogating cleanup solutions for the Gulf oil spill

Much of the media focus has been on the plugging of the oil geyser on the ocean floor, and on the politics between BP, the national government, and local governments.  What information has been reported on the cleanup has been framed through its trials and tribulations, setbacks and sorrows.  Yet, there are some interesting proposed and enacted solutions that are not getting as much attention beyond harmful dispersants, futile shovels, soapy birdbaths and exorbitant Costner solutions.

These solution examples, one propositioned and one executed, offer very interesting critical thinking discussion topics for geography classes.  Inherent behind these contributions to aid the cleanup efforts are general questions of scale, place, diffusion/movement, and environment.  Not to mention, the countless specific questions that can be formulated regarding biogeography, marine and wetland ecosystems, ocean geographies, human-environment, political geographies, economic geographies, and more.

The first solution example is offered in a recorded demonstration that presents an ingenious, yet simple proposal for soaking up oil using innocuous, abundant hay, or dried grasses.

Discussion Questions:

1)  What are some challenges that this demonstration might have in the actual environment?  Think about diffusion both in the open ocean and on the shore.

2)  Following a refresher on the concept of scale – What are the various scale considerations in implementing this demonstration?  In particular, think of the experimental scale of the demonstration and then to its enactment at the regional scale.  Focus on the extent and degree of the oil spill, the supply and availability of the grasses/hay in the demonstration, the logistical needs of implementation, etc.

3)  Why do you think it is important that the grasses they use in the demonstration do not have any seeds?  Focus on possible environmental impacts.

A second solution is one that illustrates not only inventiveness, but decisive implementation by a small coastal town in Alabama in the face of waiting for BP’s “unified command structure” and federal government bureaucracy.

Discussion Questions:

1)  Following a refresher on the concept of scale – What are the various scale considerations that have been negotiated or considered by the actors in this article?  How are the institutions and actors at various scales portrayed and for what reasons?  Think about the political, economic and logistical arguments.

2)  What is an estuary?  What types of environmental interactions in estuaries contribute to the biodiversity found in a place like Weeks Bay?  What could oil do to such wetland ecosystems?

3)  How has wave action impeded the functioning of the BP unified command’s strand of booms?  What do you think about the possible environmental consequences of single strands of booms being the generally accepted plan?

4)  What are the two main parts of the Weeks Bay solution?  What do you think of this as an alternative solution?  Think about possible environmental, and even economic, consequences for the estuary that could accompany the semi-permanent wall of barges at the mouth of the bay, and for the possibility of closing off the bay completely if called for.

For more solutions topics, refer to the many idea articles and videos compiled by the Huffington Post.

Google Earth(tm) Resources for the Gulf of Mexico Oil Slick

Description:  NASA has provided a KMZ file that gives animations, photo overlays, satellite images, trajectory forecasts, and additional resources for looking at the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Source:  Google Earth(tm) and NASA.  Open Google Earth and fly to  28°56’52.10″N,  88° 6’36.41″W to access the NASA placemark.

Discussion Topics:  Observe and describe the flow of oil over several days.  What impact will the oil spill have on human environments?  wildlife?  marine ecosystems?

Disaster in the Gulf: Are Southwest Florida’s Wildlife and Beaches at Risk?

The images are agonizing … fishermen facing ruin, their lives in jeopardy. Sea turtles surfacing through swirls of floating oil. Doomed dolphins struggling in the discolored surf. Disoriented pelicans being cleansed by overworked volunteers. Beachgoers saying that they’re on their favorite patch for one last time. Disaster looms over one of America’s most fragile ecosystems.

Fifty miles to the south, disaster had struck days earlier. Eleven men had lost their lives when one of the world’s technologically most advanced  and operationally safest oil rigs, the Deepwater Horizon, had suffered a series of devastating explosions that sank the vessel and left its newly drilled wells gushing oil into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico by the tens of thousands of gallons daily. As a growing patch of thickening oil formed over the accident’s epicenter, the coastline’s only ally was the wind. Northerly breezes slowed the oil’s advance on the Mississippi Delta and nearby shores, where workers floated miles of orange-colored floating “booms” to keep it offshore. But when British Petroleum’s first effort to cap one of the Horizon’s gushing wells failed three weeks after the explosions, the writing was on the wall. This would be no contained spill. The question was how much of the Gulf of Mexico would be despoiled.

It’s worth looking at a map to gauge the prospects.

In common with other large water bodies in the Northern Hemisphere, the Gulf of Mexico has a clockwise circulation, its waters being augmented via the Strait of Yucatan between western Cuba and the Yucatan Peninsula and leaving to join the Gulf Stream through the Florida Strait between the tip of Florida and Cuba’s north coast. If nothing else affected the Gulf’s circulation, the oil slick would move eastward along the Florida panhandle, then southward along the peninsula’s west coast and eventually eastward into the Atlantic. Indeed, some television commentators projected just such a scenario, suggesting that the oil would ultimately affect East Coast beaches, travel north in the Gulf Stream, and reach as far north as Cape Cod. 

But the situation is more complicated than that. While dominant circulation patterns driven by Coriolis force — generated by the Earth’s rotation — do create clockwise gyres in the Northern Hemisphere (and counterclockwise in the Southern Hemisphere, for those of us who remember being taught the old wives’ tale of the bathtub drain running in reverse downunder), surface patterns are far more affected by prevailing winds and other factors. In the case of the Gulf of Mexico, the salinity of coastal waters is affected by the two major rivers, the Mississippi and the Rio Grande, creating vertical as well as horizontal circulations. The submarine topography of the Gulf of Mexico, which is much deeper in the west than in the east, also comes into play. The shallower eastern Gulf increases its potential vulnerability to oil pollution.

So there is no simple answer to the question of risk. Are the beaches and ecologies of Southwest Florida in danger? Not yet, but the longer the oil gushes into the Gulf, the greater the danger will obviously be. Will wind directions help alleviate the risk created by the fundamental circulation of the Gulf’s waters? Since this appears now to be a crisis that will endure for months, it is relevant that summer is the time when the easterly Trade Winds are strongest, and their effect is likely to be to push oil slicks away from Southwest Florida shores. But all westward-moving pressure systems, being circular, have eastward components, and there will be times when the same Gulf breezes we covet on Boca Grande have the potential to bring oil to our shores – unless BP somehow manages to stem the flow of oil.

At the time of writing, that does not look likely.  So the short answer to the question is: yes

**This article by Wiley author, H.J. de Blij, originally appeared in the Gasparilla Gazette, May 12, 2010. Click here to see article in its original format.