Friday, July 02, 2010

Latest Images of Gulf Oil Disaster

NASA provides images on its web site of the Deep Horizon Oil Disaster, using data from multiple cameras of JPL's MISR instrument on NASA's Terra satellite. The images show the spread of oil into Louisiana’s fragile wetlands early in June. More recently, Florida Governor Charlie Crist released data and images from NOAA, showing the oil plume at 50 miles away from Panama City and 271 miles from St. Petersburg.  This satellite image shows the extent of the spill today, as reported on The Gov Monitor along with pollution monitoring data.

Follow the oil spill trajectory at with NOAA's GeoPlatform, a "new tool that provides near-real time information about the response effort."

NOAA's response to the disaster is described in detail on their Office of Response and Restoration web site, one of hundreds of web sites and other resources listed in the NOAA Central Library's very thorough bibliography Resources on Oil Spills, Response and Restoration.

Photos of animals caught in the slick are all-too readily found on the web.  AP Photos by Charlie Reidel are particularly troubling, as icons of the catastrophe.

Science magazine is covering "five key issues" of the oil spill, with clear analysis of the effects on fisheries and food, coastal ecosystems, life on the sea floor, marine life, and the fate of oil.

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