BP oil spill: How to save wetlands? Set them on fire, maybe

The BP oil spill is moving into Louisiana's wetlands – a worst-case scenario for wildlife and the fishing industry. There is no perfect solution, scientists say, but a controlled burn is one option.

By Pete Spotts, Staff writer / May 24, 2010

The most effective tool for cleaning up the oil working its way into southern Louisiana wetlands may, in the end, be the equivalent of a box of kitchen matches.


Controlled burns are perhaps the least-worst alternative among a small handful of approaches to clear contaminated wetlands of oil or its refined products, several researchers say.

So far, oil from the five-week-old BP oil spill has hit about 65 miles of the Louisiana coastline and has traveled as many as 12 miles inland, according to state officials

IN PICTURES: Louisiana oil spill

As oil migrates into the wetlands, several possibilities for dealing with it exist. But not all of them may be practical in this situation, cautions Qianxin Lin, a coastal ecologist at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.


remainder in full: http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0524/BP-oil-spill-How-to-save-wetlands-Set-them-on-fire-maybe.

As Lin said in the OP I posted: "The technique isn't a panacea, notes Lin, who along with LSU colleague Irving Mendelssohn, has studied it. If water levels in the marsh are too low – perhaps an inch or less covering the sediment – the fire's heat likely will destroy the roots, which are vital to preventing erosion. And any intrusion of oil into the soil also can kill off the plants."

This entire mess is frightening as hell.

From your OP: "In the sensitive marshes of the California’s Bay-Delta 35 years later, Bea said, workers used buckets to scoop up the mess from a 60,000-gallon pipeline oil spill.

“We killed the marsh,” he said." (end)

So much for good intentions.

AND WE'RE JUST NOW GETTING AROUND TO IT?

Sid

Like BushCo claimed during Katrina when we begged for adequate federal intervention? And they say Republicans change their tune depending on whether they're in or out of power.

It's nice that you're defending your hero Obama. While you're doing that, what's HE doing?

personally, I didn't think it was justified.

Sid

:sarcasm:

for biodiversity recovery after the gusher is stopped.

ASAP: Identify a distributed spatial network of marshlands that are located in areas where protection measures can be practically put in place to avoid any pollution from the gusher and remediation. The plan is to have these serve as refuges for the biological renewal, essentially the well-protected and distributed wetland would function as scattered biological legacies.

After the gusher is stopped one could expect that oil would come ashore over a period of years. One could use repeated light burns over a decade or more as the oil comes ashore and some marsh areas would tend to collect more and others less oil.

Fire science in wildland vegetation is developed for many types of vegetation. There would be the highly protected areas plus in areas of lesser impact there would likely be islands not impacted by oil where the undamaged areas could be protected and provide more immediate sources of rejuvenation.

I would theorize that repeated burns will both be necessary because oil will be coming ashore for years and also more frequent burns are less destructive.

In general this seems like a common sense approach to have as an in place plan.

I have years of experience and education in landscape scale ecology including prescribed burning and to me time to plan this is now and a logical program to have already had in place and methods well researched.

I have do not have direct experience in salt water wetlands so cannot be more specific.

Plans like this would be in programatic Environmental Impact Statements under NEPA.

I am still blown away that deep water drilling were being permitted under Categorical Exclusions.

In order to save them.