Monday, November 29, 2010

Huge online resource released for Gulf of Mexico oil spill


This announcement came in this afternoon. On first glance, it looks like everything you'd ever want about the Gulf oil leak:

The National Council for Science and the Environment (NCSE) and its partners, Boston University and Louisiana State University, have created a resource that will allow you to explore these questions and others, as well as to contribute your own expertise.

The Online Clearinghouse for Education & Networking: Oil Interdisciplinary Learning (OCEAN-OIL) is an open-access, peer-reviewed electronic education resource about the Deepwater Horizon disaster. The project is funded by the National Science Foundation. [right, leaking oil from the sea floor streams west. Photo credit, Gary Braasch on the www.eoearth.org site]

The OCEAN-OIL website is seamlessly integrated into the Encyclopedia of Earth (www.eoearth.org), which is a free, peer-reviewed, searchable collection of content about the Earth, its natural environments, and their interaction with society, written by expert scholars and educators. NCSE coordinates the Encyclopedia.

OCEAN-OIL already contains:

1,000+ hyper-linked encyclopedia style articles related to the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, including offshore oil and gas, the ecological effects of oil spills, details of the event, oil spill response, and lessons from the disaster, and related topics

400+ glossary of important terms related to oil spill causes, impacts, clean-up, and prevention

75+ acronyms (LPG, PPM, ROV, VOC) to help decode the language of oil spill science

80+ external resource links to federal government sites, image galleries, news sources, industry, environmental groups, education, and journal articles

Deepwater Horizon photo gallery: Images by renowned photojournalist Gary Braasch

Deepwater Horizon by the Numbers: Publication quality graphs

Reports of the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill