ACER study finds piece to DH puzzle

The Alabama Center for Ecologicial Resilience (ACER) has added another piece to the puzzle to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon (DH) oil spill across the northern Gulf of Mexico. ACER, led by scientists at the Dauphin Island (Ala.) Sea Lab, is one of 17 consortia funded by the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative to understand the impacts of the disaster and how to be more prepared to respond to future events. ACER’s team focus was understanding how biodiversity influences ecosystem resilience and the ability to resist and recover from disturbances in the aftermath of major oil spills. In April, Ecosphere, an Ecological Society of America’s (ESA) open access journal, published a paper by seven ACER scientists titled: “Effects of oil exposure, plant species composition, and plant genotypic diversity on salt marsh and mangrove assemblages." The publication compares the resistance to and recovery from, oil pollution by salt marsh grasses and mangroves. The results of the year-long outdoor mesocosm experiment showed that when grown together, mangrove and cordgrass were more resilient in recovering from negative impacts. The “results suggest that transition habitats in the northern Gulf of Mexico where A. germinans and S. alterniflora co‐occur will be negatively impacted by future oiling events, but that they are no more susceptible, and perhaps slightly less so, than habitats dominated by either individual species.” This study focuses on one of the seven components covered by ACER’s research, and is the fourth publication from the ACER team. (Source: Dauphin Island Sea Lab 05/14/18)