Semi-quantitative risk assessment of marine mammal oil exposure: A case study in the western Gulf of Mexico

Autor: M. Rafael Ramírez-León, Oscar Sosa-Nishizaki, Paula Pérez-Brunius, Alfonsina E. Romo-Curiel, Zurisaday Ramírez-Mendoza, Arturo Fajardo-Yamamoto, Sharon Z. Herzka, María C. García-Aguilar
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2023
Předmět:
Zdroj: Frontiers in Marine Science, Vol 10 (2023)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 2296-7745
DOI: 10.3389/fmars.2023.1034647
Popis: Marine mammals are highly vulnerable to oil spills, although the effects at both individual and population levels are not fully understood. A first approximation to evaluate the possible consequences of oil spills on marine life is using ecological risk assessments, which are analytical tools used to assess the likelihood of adverse environmental effects due to exposure to stressors derived from human activities. We developed a semi-quantitative framework to evaluate the risk of oil spill exposure on marine mammals that combines the likelihood of exposure based on species-specific biological and ecological traits, and the feasibility of encounter, which considers not only the overlap between the distribution of the species and the total affected area by a spill but also considers the distribution of spilled oil within this area, thus reducing the uncertainty in the estimate. We applied our framework to assess the risk of exposure of eight cetaceans to scenarios of large heavy oil (API gravity
Databáze: Directory of Open Access Journals