Freshwater oil spill remediation study at the IISD-experimental lakes area: (The FOReSt Project)

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Environmental impacts of oil spills are a major concern for the Canadian public. Regulators and the scientificcommunity are also uncertain which methods are best to employ when cleaning up oil spills in differentenvironments. Improving effectiveness of clean-up procedures under realistic field situations is required toaddress these significant knowledge gaps. The collaborative research being proposed here will be conducted byresearchers from the Universities of Manitoba, Calgary, McGill, Institut National de la Recherche Scientifiqueand the International Institute for Sustainable Development-Experimental Lakes Area (IISD-ELA). It willconsist of a large multi-phased project to examine the fate and behaviour of spilled oil, and to compare spillclean-up methods in a freshwater environment. The project includes participation from industry, government,First Nations and community groups, and will quantify impacts (i.e., ecological, social and economic valuefrom lost ecosystem services) of oil spilled into freshwater environments. Examining effectiveness, andimpacts, of current oil spill clean-up methods in freshwater systems is a key component of the project. Manycurrent strategies for removing spilled oil focus on mechanical removal; however, this can be ecologicallydamaging and economically costly. The goal of the proposed project is to determine relative effectiveness ofphysical, chemical and biological oil spill clean-up methods in different shoreline environments. Small-scalemodel oil spills will be used to examine the ability of different cleanup methods to remove residual oil andmaintain ecosystem function in enclosed regions of a natural boreal lake. The work to be conducted in Year 1will serve as a pilot experiment which aims to determine the oil product to be tested in the full-scale field studyin Year 2. Ecological recovery of the affected areas, together with social and economic impacts ofincorporating different remediation approaches for responding to spills will be quantified through monitoringthe contained environments in Year 3 and 4. Optimizing remediation strategies applied to oil spills will benefitCanadians by significantly improving response efficiencies and restoring ecosystem services more quickly.