The Deepwater Horizon oil spill began on April 20, 2010, with a blowout of BP’s Macondo drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico. In addition to the death of 11 men, the spill resulted in the largest mobilization of resources addressing an environmental emergency in the history of the United States. The size of the spill required the Emergency Response Division to refine tracking subsurface oil, flowrate calculations, and long-term oil transport modeling. Data and information management became a paramount issue ...
This feature is part of a monthly series profiling scientists and technicians who provide exemplary contributions to the mission of NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration (OR&R). In this month’s feature meet Steve Lehmann, a scientific support coordinator with OR&R’s Emergency Response Division.
By Steve Lehmann, Office of Response and Restoration
It is true that a sports car represents the apex of transportation engineering, but that sometimes a horse is the right tool for the job. New ideas come from new minds. For the past several years, oil spill response experts from NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration have been working with undergraduates in the environmental engineering program at the University of New Hampshire to examine simple answers to a complex problem.
Every month our Emergency Response Division provides scientific expertise and services to the U.S. Coast Guard on everything from running oil spill trajectories to model where the spill may spread, to possible effects on wildlife and fisheries and estimates on how long the oil may stay in the environment. This month OR&R responded to 15 incidents, including oil discharges, sunken vessels, and other pollution-related incidents. Here are some of February's notable incidents ...
