It is now more than 7 months since the largest marine oil spill in history began in the Gulf of Mexico. Many questions remain regarding the causes, magnitude and consequences of the Deepwater Horizon blow out. Larger questions remain regarding off-shore drilling and the use of energy and society.
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.
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
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. The Encyclopedia's Editor-in-Chief Cutler Cleveland of Boston University, who is an expert in energy and society, leads the development of the new online resource.