Exposure Outliers: Children, Mothers, and Cumulative Disaster Exposure in Louisiana

Only a limited number of studies have explored the effects of cumulative disaster exposure—defined here as multiple, acute onset, large-scale collective events that cause disruption for individuals, families, and entire communities. Research that is available indicates that children and adults who experience these potentially traumatic community-level events are at greater risk of a variety of negative health outcomes and ongoing secondary stressors throughout their life course. The present study draws on in-depth interviews with a qualitative subsample of nine mother-child pairs who were identified as both statistical and theoretical outliers in terms of their levels of disaster exposure through their participation in a larger, longitudinal Women and Their Children’s Health (WaTCH) project that was conducted following the British Petroleum Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. During Wave 2 of the WaTCH study, mothers and their children were asked survey questions about previous exposure to and the impacts of the oil spill, hurricanes, and other disasters. This article presents the qualitative interview data collected from the subsample of children and mothers who both endorsed that they had experienced three or more disasters that had a major impact on the child and the household. We refer to these children as exposure outliers. The in-depth narratives of the four mother-child pairs who told stories of multiple pre-disaster stressors emerging from structural inequalities and health and financial problems, protracted and unstable displacements, and high levels of material and social losses illustrate how problems can pile up to slow or completely hinder individual and family disaster recovery. These four mother-child pairs were especially likely to have experienced devastating losses in Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which then led to an accumulation of disadvantage and ongoing cycles of loss and disruption. The stories of the remaining five mother-child pairs underscore how pre-disaster resources, post-disaster support, and institutional stabilizing forces can accelerate recovery even after multiple disaster exposures. This study offers insights about how families can begin to prepare for a future that is likely to be increasingly punctuated by more frequent and intense extreme weather events and other types of disaster

Salt Marsh Bacterial Communities Before And After The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

Coastal salt marshes along the northern Gulf of Mexico shoreline received varied types and amounts of weathered oil residues after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. At the time, predicting how marsh bacterial communities would respond and/or recover to oiling and other environmental stressors was difficult because baseline information on community composition and dynamics was generally unavailable. Here, we evaluated marsh vegetation, physicochemistry, flooding frequency, hydrocarbon chemistry, and subtidal sediment bacterial communities from 16S rRNA gene surveys at 11 sites in southern Louisiana before the oil spill and resampled the same marshes three to four times over 38 months after the spill. Calculated hydrocarbon biomarker indices indicated that oil replaced native natural organic matter (NOM) originating from Spartina alterniflora and marine phytoplankton in the marshes between May 2010 and September 2010. At all the studied marshes, the major class-and order-level shifts among the phyla Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes, and Actinobacteria occurred within these first 4 months, but another community shift occurred at the time of peak oiling in 2011. Two years later, hydrocarbon levels decreased and bacterial communities became more diverse, being dominated by Alphaproteobacteria (Rhizobiales), Chloroflexi (Dehalococcoidia), and Planctomycetes. Compositional changes through time could be explained by NOM source differences, perhaps due to vegetation changes, as well as marsh flooding and salinity excursions linked to freshwater diversions. These findings indicate that persistent hydrocarbon exposure alone did not explain long-term community shifts. IMPORTANCE Significant deterioration of coastal salt marshes in Louisiana has been linked to natural and anthropogenic stressors that can adversely affect how ecosystems function. Although microorganisms carry out and regulate most biogeochemical reactions, the diversity of bacterial communities in coastal marshes is poorly known, with limited investigation of potential changes in bacterial communities in response to various environmental stressors. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill provided an unprecedented opportunity to study the long-term effects of an oil spill on microbial systems in marshes. Compared to previous studies, the significance of our research stems from (i) a broader geographic range of studied marshes, (ii) an extended time frame of data collection that includes prespill conditions, (iii) a more accurate procedure using biomarker indices to understand oiling, and (iv) an examination of other potential stressors linked to in situ environmental changes, aside from oil exposure

Quantitative Oil Source-Fingerprinting Techniques and Their Application to Differentiating Crude Oil in Coastal Marsh Sediments

Oil source-fingerprinting is an environmental forensics technique that uses analytical chemistry to determine the origin of oil residues in environmental samples by comparison to a known or suspected source oil. Currently, the only standardized method for oil source fingerprinting is a qualitative approach that is very effective in almost every oil spill response situation. However, the need for quantitative oil source-fingerprinting methods to complement the qualitative determinations is extremely desired. The research herein aims to utilize data generated by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) methodologies to test two different quantitative techniques: diagnostic biomarker ratio analysis and chemometrics. The most common crude oil constituents used for oil source-fingerprinting are the oil biomarker compounds. Oil biomarkers are polycyclic aliphatic hydrocarbon molecules typically resistant to environmental weathering (i.e., biological and physiochemical transformations). They are universal in crude oils and most petroleum products, and impart unique ratios in oils of different maturities and geographic sources. Diagnostic biomarker ratio analysis will be used to establish a suite of diagnostic biomarker ratios with statistical limitations that can differentiate oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, or Macondo 252 (MC252) oil, from other South Louisiana crude oils. This technique is not limited to MC252 oil. Diagnostic ratios can be determined and tested for any source oil. Current published research has documented weathering of several of the biomarker compounds used for oil source-fingerprinting. Any weathering of MC252 oil residues in the environment will adversely affect the diagnostic biomarker ratio analysis. Therefore, a more advanced quantitative technique, chemometrics, will use pattern recognition algorithms to determine the innate similarity of environmental oil residues to MC252 oil

Cumulative disaster exposure and coping capacity of women and their children in southeast Louisiana

2017 Summer.Includes bibliographical references.Many studies have shown how cumulative disaster exposure and trauma can lead to a multitude of negative outcomes. As the risk of cumulative disaster exposure continues to increase because of climate change and population growth, this area of study is becoming increasingly important. This thesis is part of the Women and Their Children's Health (WaTCH) Study, which involves survey work with women and children affected by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. Specifically, the current study explores the experiences of nine mother-child pairs who reported in the WaTCH study that they had experienced three or more disasters that had a major impact on the child and the household. Open ended, inductive interviews were conducted with these mother-child pairs in order to understand how cumulative disaster exposures impact mothers and their children and what strategies were used to cope with these exposures. This thesis found that disaster experiences alone did not determine disaster coping and recovery, but rather it was how these exposures combined with secondary stressors, some of which were related to demographic variables, that influenced disaster outcomes. Single parent households, African Americans, and low-income families who experienced long, unstable displacement periods, material, social, and instrumental losses, and problems with school adjustment demonstrated how problems can pile up to slow or hinder current and future disaster coping and recovery. Alternatively, the families who had high incomes, fewer displacements, less material loss, and high levels of social support were able to recover more quickly and show some adaptive capacity in the face of disasters, growing more and more resilient with each disaster experience

Sediment and Plant Dynamics in a Degrading Coastal Louisiana Landscape

Alterations to Louisiana’s river systems and local hydrology have resulted in reduced freshwater, sediment, and nutrient inputs into wetland landscapes, causing significant negative impacts on marsh productivity and stability. To combat these losses many restoration projects have been constructed or planned throughout coastal Louisiana. Typical goals of wetland restoration efforts are to conserve, create, or enhance wetland form, and to achieve wetland function that approaches natural conditions. Failure to adequately maintain wetland elevation and hydrology can have serious implications on sedimentation and vegetation processes, which significantly reduces the likelihood of reaching structural and functional targets. Measures of wetland condition have been used to monitor and assess project performance, resilience, and adaptive management needs. This study assessed the use of remotely sensed and in situ data, in addition to landscape metrics (i.e., marsh area, edge density, and aggregation index) and vegetative indices (i.e., vegetation cover, normalized difference vegetative index, and floristic quality index) to evaluate changes and trends in restored wetland condition, function, and resilience, and compare those to naturally occurring reference wetlands. Results show that restoration measures (i.e., hydrologic restoration, wetland restoration, and beneficial use of dredge material) significantly increased wetland function (i.e., vegetation productivity, carbon sequestration, floristic quality), stability (i.e., increased marsh area, reduced loss rates, and increased spatial integrity), and resilience to disturbance events. Though many structural and functional measures (i.e., vegetation and landscape indices) of restored wetlands rapidly achieved equivalency to reference wetlands (approximately 3 to 5 years after construction), others, like some fundamental soil functions (i.e., carbon accumulation) required several decades to reach equivalency. These results demonstrated the importance of river connectivity and sedimentation for wetland productivity and overall spatial integrity. These studies show remotely sensing data and applications can significantly supplement traditional methods and provide critical knowledge elements for more efficient inventorying and monitoring of wetland resources, forecasting of resource condition and stability, and formulating adaptive management strategies

Social Vulnerability in the Wake of 2010 BP Oil Spill: The Case of Southeast Louisiana

The research presented in this dissertation assesses the social impacts of the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon (BP-DH) oil spill in South Louisiana. The coastal region affected by this disaster is made up of rural communities whose residents rely on the Gulf of Mexico and its resources for their livelihoods. Understanding how this disaster has impacted the general quality of life in spill-affected communities, and how community characteristics have influenced vulnerability and resilience to negative outcomes, has important implications for basic and applied research and public policy. To examine these issues I use one-of-a-kind household survey data from the Community Oil Spill Survey (COSS) that includes a variety of measures indexing community sentiment, social vulnerability, physical health, mental health, disruptions to normal routines, economic impacts on households, and so forth. These data provide a novel opportunity to examine how the adaptive capacities of communities shape population wellness in a disaster context. This study is grounded in literatures that emphasizes the role of emplaced local community conditions for shaping ways in which people experience and interpret hazards, risks and disasters. Specifically, I assess the social vulnerability of residents of coastal communities in Southeast Louisiana which were directly affected by the BP-DH oil spill. The aim of the project is threefold: 1) to identify the nature and extent to which the oil spill impacted residents’ sentiment about their communities; 2) to investigate the variation in community level vulnerability and resilience in the wake of the disaster; and 3) to assess impacts to mental well-being tied to the loss of—or damage to—key resources upon which the victim is reliant

Children’s Health after the Oil Spill: A Four-State Study Findings from the Gulf Coast Population Impact (GCPI) Project

In 2012, with funding from the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, the National Center for Disaster Preparedness (NCDP) at Columbia University, in partnership with the Children’s Health Fund, launched a four-state study in order (1) to identify communities of children in the coastal areas of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida who were adversely impacted by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, (2) to explore the prevalence of physical and mental health effects among these children, and (3) to conduct a preliminary assessment of the health services available to these children and the potential for targeted interventions or health system enhancements. We identified fifteen communities with higher numbers of BP compensation claims submitted by individuals and by businesses, and which also had higher rates of oil washing up on their shores based upon monitoring data collected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Over a span of four and a half months, a field team of six interviewers and two field coordinators completed 1,437 face-to-face household surveys. The parents whom we interviewed reported considerable exposure to the oil spill as well as a number of physical and mental health problems among their children. Over half of the parents interviewed in these highly-impacted communities reported that their children had some type of oil spill-related exposure, whether it was through physical, environmental, or economic factors. One in every five parents said their children had direct contact with the oil; one in four reported smelling strong oil-related odors; and two of every five said their household had lost income or a job since the oil spill. A little over 40% of parents in these high-impact communities reported some type of health effect experienced by their children since the oil spill. 18.1% of the parents said their children had experienced breathing problems after the oil spill, 14.8% noted skin problems, 16.0% reported visual problems and 21.6% mentioned emotional or behavioral problems since the oil spill. In October 2012 our research team traveled to four communities to interview local officials and leaders and conduct in-depth parent focus groups. We selected the four communities based on the household data, where parents had reported significant health effects. Across the four communities, the team heard of significant issues related to children’s health and well-being

Effect of Tropical Cyclones on Coastal Marine Ecosystems

Tropical cyclone activity is predicted to intensify with anthropogenic climate change. Therefore, there has been a call to action in the scientific community to increase knowledge of the impacts of tropical cyclones on ecosystems. In particular, there is a wide knowledge gap in the understanding of how tropical cyclones influence coastal marine ecosystems. Using a standardized Web of Science database search, I identified 101 peer-reviewed articles documenting the impacts of tropical cyclones on coastal marine ecosystems in the North Atlantic Ocean, including coral reefs, mangrove forests, salt marshes, and seagrass meadows. Here, I summarize the results of these articles with the aim of improving general understanding of how past tropical cyclones have affected coastal marine ecosystems. Specifically, I summarize the types of tropical cyclones that have most often been documented to impact ecosystems (tropical storms or Category 1 to 5 hurricanes), how often the impacts have been documented in each of the past 5 decades (1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s), and at what level of biological organization most of the impacts have been recorded (organismal, population, community, or ecosystem). Category 3 or greater intensity hurricanes have been responsible for most of the impacts to marine ecosystems recorded in the literature. However, there is no clear increase or decrease in the number of impacts recorded in each decade. This result may be due to a time lag in the publication of research results that has reduced the number of reports in the most recent decade. Most of the impacts of tropical cyclones have been recorded at the population level, with a decrease in population abundance following a storm. The findings of this literature review can help create a larger view of how scientists should prepare for the consequences of these natural disasters

Effective strategies to manage dredge related threats to tropical seagrass systems based on seagrass ecological requirements

Major dredging projects have the potential to impact on tropical seagrass communities through direct removal and burial and indirectly through turbid dredge plumes reducing the amount of light available to seagrasses. This is a major concern in Australia and elsewhere in the Indo Pacific region where substantial expansion of tropical ports associated with the resources boom is occurring. In the majority of cases managing the impacts from turbid plumes has focussed on a turbidity threshold that has not been related to the true light requirements of the various seagrass species potentially impacted. Here we report on the value of an approach based on determining the minimum light requirements of species, their resilience to impacts and ability to recover and designing a dredge mitigation approach that is focussed on maintaining critical windows of light to support seagrass growth and longer term survival. Results show the value of experimentally determining locally relevant ecological requirements and the importance of understanding the relationships between light requirements, tidal exposure, shifts in spectral quality of light, seasonality and capacity for species to recover from light stress in determining ecologically relevant triggers. This information combined with a robust toolkit for assessing sub-lethal light stress provides an effective dredge mitigation strategy to protect seagrasses