GPS Tracking Device Used to Help with Future Oil Spills
16 Jan 2014Scientists attempt to prevent damage from future oil spills by using GPS tracking technology.
The last major oil spill was the Deepwater Horizon spill, also referred to as the BP Oil Spill, in 2010, which involved 4.9 million barrels of oil being poured into the Gulf of Mexico. The spill occurred during a period of three months and caused devastation to local beaches, ecosystems, and wildlife. And this is what researchers want to try to avoid.
As reported by Medill Reports, models are being used that show what happens when nearly five million barrels of oil are poured into the Gulf, using this last spill as a prime example of the utter devastation it causes. The mission is to understand the behavior of oil in the deep blue ocean and predict how it will move at a site of an oil spill leak.
The modeling research project is being performed in Florida’s Panhandle and includes researchers and scientists from 16 different colleges and universities. The most recent part of the study included collecting data for the model to show what happens onshore when the oil spill occurs. The goal is to find possible ways of mitigating the damage and to divert the spill, if at all possible.
Researchers for this study belong to a team funded by the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative, as part of the Consortium for Advanced Research on Transport of Hydrocarbon in the Environment (CARTHE). The research initiative distributes $500 million donated by British Petroleum in order to properly study how petroleum impacts the environment and public health.
As of now, they are using the Gulf as the location for their study. The communities on the coast of the Gulf have a $20 billion tourism industry, which was widely affected by the most recent oil spill. This includes coastal communities in Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama. The local economy took a huge hit, not to mention the thousands of animals either killed by the oil or who were covered in oil, according the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
CARTHE is currently in its second year of the study, gathering data for predicting oil transport, working to mitigate the effects of oil explosions and inform the local environmental policy. There is also real-time data from experiments being collected by GPS trackers via drifter, or buoyant devices that moves along with the ocean’s currents, as well as measures it.
The most recent section of the study involved performing a large ocean experiment to see how oil goes from outside a surf zone and travels onto the beach. They have 250 buoys, called drifters, to see how they move with the ocean currents on Okaloosa Island in Florida. These drifters are equipped with GPS tracking devices to look at their positions and movement throughout the day, including their location and time.
GPS tracking technology is helping with the study by examining how currents are influence by winds and waves and measuring wind speed to find out how oil would spread from the ocean, onto the beach. Many instruments are being used in the study to gather as much data as possible.
After data is collected, researchers plan to use 3D pictures of oil transports and hope to come up with more information about oil spills, how to mitigate their damage, and how to protect the environment , wildlife, and vegetation.
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