Estimates of losses and recovery of ecosystem services for oiled beaches lack clarity and ecological realism

Abstract

Assessing environmental injury requires accurate, timely information of damage responses and realistic translation of that information into estimates of services lost to the public. The accuracy of both steps improves with the extent of ecological understanding of the impacted habitat; more accurate assessments produce more effective rehabilitation efforts and equitable compensation decisions. Exposed, sandy beaches are one of our most familiar and highly valued coastal areas, yet, when oiled, providing uncontested environmental assessments for beaches challenges both responsible parties and natural resource trustees. The dynamic, physical nature of exposed beaches has limited experimental inquiry preventing the development of widely accepted ecological models describing beach function. The same dynamic nature confounds sampling beaches efficiently in the aftermath of an oil spill. To constrain oiled beach impact assessments in the future and to encourage investigation of topics relevant to beach environmental assessment, we provide a summary of beach ecosystem services, re-examine the results of the limited number of relevant oiled beach studies, define ecological criteria that would improve extrapolating injury assessments drawn from cognate literature, and identify research topics for investigation.