Advanced environmental monitoring solutions for the oil and gas industry in the Atlantic Frontier

大西洋边境石油和天然气行业的先进环境监测解决方案

• 批准号: NE/M007235/1
• 负责人: J Roberts
• 金额: $ 10.35万
• 依托单位: Heriot-Watt University
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2015 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE%2FM007235%2F1
• 关键词: Advanced; environmental; monitoring; solutions; oil

Exploration and production in the Atlantic Margin are underway in the Faroe Shetland Basin and northern North Sea, with viable or possible petroleum prospects in the Rockall Tough and Hatton Basin, and much of the UK's undiscovered sources in the region (DECC, 2009). Operations in these biologically rich, productive but sensitive areas will occur in data-limited environments very different to the shallow-water systems where environmental assessment methods were first developed: thus, there is clear scope for mutually beneficial joint Science-Industry partnerships in this frontier environment. Benthic biological changes near industry operations can occur for many reasons. This can confound the impact assessment and monitoring process: benthos in the mature North Sea basin show profound spatial and temporal changes, but industry effects could not be clearly discerned from other potential agents of change using standard multivariate statistics (Kingston et al. 2001). Recent NERC and industry-funded research re-visited these data using more sophisticated methods, finding that regional far-field benthos often changed more in response to oceanography than to industry activity. NERC research also shows similar temporal changes in the deep northeast Atlantic (Hartman et al., 2012). Unlike the North Sea, the Atlantic Margin experiences little oil and gas production and offers unique opportunities to obtain measures of baseline environmental variability before large-scale drilling and production begins. Environmental monitoring and the UK's capacity to detect or mitigate industry-related changes are important in the UK sector, to neighbouring countries and to comparable settings worldwide. Without an understanding of natural environmental variability and how this induces change in seafloor faunal communities, it will be very difficult to appropriately assess, monitor, or mitigate potential impacts of the industry.NERC's EEL, NEMO, and BGS sediment data can provide the industry with an unsurpassed archive of ocean temperatures, salinities, seabed stress, sediment particle size and metal concentrations across the Atlantic Margin, all of which influence benthic biodiversity. NERC data will underpin our new GIS tool that will be enhanced by addition of benthic biological, sediment and chemical data from the UK Benthos database (Oil and Gas UK), the SERPENT project (NOC), AFEN, DTI-SEA surveys, and the Western Frontiers Association (BGS). These maps and new measures of baseline variability in benthic communities from the SEA4 area will permit us to make clear evidence-based recommendations for monitoring. Ultimately it will help end users such as operators and regulators achieve safe and environmentally sustainable operations in this economically important, biologically diverse and ecologically sensitive region. The industry needs tools to rapidly and regularly appraise environmental impacts to meet the UK's obligations to OSPAR (OSPAR, 2010) and the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive (2008/56/EC; MSFD). The MSFD's criteria of good environmental status must result in the UK being able to assess the "scale, distribution and intensity of the pressures and the extent, vulnerability and resilience of the different ecosystem components including where possible their mapping, [which] allows the identification of areas where marine ecosystems have or may have been adversely affected" (EC, 2010). Meeting those obligations will only be possible through monitoring programmes that understand and account for natural levels of environmental and biological variability. By fusing NERC's unsurpassed oceanographic time-series and geological coverage with other data, our project will assist users in helping the UK meet its environmental obligations under OSPAR and the EU MFSD by ensuring that appropriate monitoring protocols are implemented.

大西洋边缘的勘探和生产正在法罗设得兰盆地和北海北部进行，在 Rockall Tough 和 Hatton 盆地以及英国在该地区的许多未发现的资源中具有可行或可能的石油前景（DECC，2009）。这些生物丰富、多产但敏感的地区的作业将发生在数据有限的环境中，这与最初开发环境评估方法的浅水系统非常不同：因此，在这一前沿环境中，存在明确的互惠互利的科学与工业联合伙伴关系的空间。工业运营附近发生底栖生物变化的原因有很多。这可能会混淆影响评估和监测过程：成熟的北海盆地的底栖生物表现出深刻的空间和时间变化，但使用标准多元统计数据无法清楚地区分行业影响与其他潜在的变化因素（Kingston等人，2001年）。最近，NERC 和行业资助的研究使用更复杂的方法重新审视了这些数据，发现区域远场底栖生物往往因海洋学而发生变化，而不是因行业活动而发生变化。 NERC 研究还显示了东北大西洋深处类似的时间变化（Hartman 等，2012）。与北海不同，大西洋边缘的石油和天然气产量很少，并且为在大规模钻探和生产开始之前获取基线环境变化的测量提供了独特的机会。环境监测以及英国检测或减轻行业相关变化的能力对于英国行业、邻国以及全球类似环境都很重要。如果不了解自然环境变化及其如何引起海底动物群落的变化，就很难适当评估、监测或减轻该行业的潜在影响。NERC 的 EEL、NEMO 和 BGS 沉积物数据可以为该行业提供无与伦比的大西洋边缘海洋温度、盐度、海底应力、沉积物颗粒大小和金属浓度档案，所有这些都会影响海底生物 生物多样性。 NERC 数据将支撑我们新的 GIS 工具，该工具将通过添加来自英国底栖数据库（英国石油和天然气）、SERPENT 项目 (NOC)、AFEN、DTI-SEA 调查和西部边境协会 (BGS) 的海底生物、沉积物和化学数据而得到增强。这些地图和 SEA4 区域底栖群落基线变化的新测量方法将使我们能够提出明确的基于证据的监测建议。最终，它将帮助运营商和监管机构等最终用户在这个经济重要、生物多样性和生态敏感的地区实现安全和环境可持续的运营。该行业需要快速、定期评估环境影响的工具，以履行英国对 OSPAR（OSPAR，2010）和欧盟海洋战略框架指令（2008/56/EC；MSFD）的义务。 MSFD 的良好环境状况标准必须使英国能够评估“压力的规模、分布和强度以及不同生态系统组成部分的程度、脆弱性和复原力，包括在可能的情况下绘制地图，[从而]能够识别海洋生态系统已经或可能受到不利影响的区域”（EC，2010）。只有通过了解并考虑环境和生物变异自然水平的监测计划，才有可能履行这些义务。通过将 NERC 无与伦比的海洋学时间序列和地质覆盖范围与其他数据相融合，我们的项目将帮助用户确保实施适当的监测协议，帮助英国履行 OSPAR 和欧盟 MFSD 规定的环境义务。

项目成果

Marine Animal Forests - The Ecology of Benthic Biodiversity Hotspots

海洋动物森林 - 底栖生物多样性热点地区的生态

• DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-17001-5_6-1
• 发表时间: 2015
• 作者: Henry L

Historic scale and persistence of drill cuttings impacts on North Sea benthos.

• DOI: 10.1016/j.marenvres.2017.05.008
• 发表时间: 2017-08
• 期刊: Marine environmental research
• 影响因子: 3.3
• 作者: L. Henry;Dan Harries;P. Kingston;J. M. Roberts

Sensitivity of marine protected area network connectivity to atmospheric variability.

• DOI: 10.1098/rsos.160494
• 发表时间: 2016-11
• 期刊: Royal Society open science
• 影响因子: 3.5
• 作者: Fox AD;Henry LA;Corne DW;Roberts JM
• 通讯作者: Roberts JM

Soaking up the oil: Biological impacts of dispersants and crude oil on the sponge Halichondria panicea.

• DOI: 10.1016/j.chemosphere.2020.127109
• 发表时间: 2020-05
• 期刊: Chemosphere
• 影响因子: 8.8
• 作者: J. Vad;F. Dunnett;F. Liu;C. Montagner;J. Roberts;T. Henry

Towards a common approach to the assessment of the environmental status of deep-sea ecosystems in areas beyond national jurisdiction

采取共同方法评估国家管辖范围以外区域深海生态系统的环境状况

• DOI: 10.1016/j.marpol.2020.104182
• 发表时间: 2020
• 期刊: Marine Policy
• 影响因子: 3.8
• 作者: Orejas C