Geohistorical records indicate no impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on oyster body size

Dietl, Gregory P.; Durham, Stephen R.

doi:10.1098/rsos.160763

Cited by 11 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 54 publications

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“…

I

and

C

were varied using empirical estimates of the proportional change in control and impact sites in the before period versus the after period,

p_{I}

and

p_{C}

, respectively, sampled from 47 ecological datasets

(I

λ \cdot (p_{I} - 1)

;

C

λ \cdot (p_{C} - 1)

; Table ). A list of the published datasets used to calculate empirical estimates in this study are provided in the Data sources section (Burge et al, ; Dietl & Durham, ; Moland et al, ; Sepúlveda & Valdivia, ; Williams, Miller, Bright, & Cameron, ; see also Appendix ).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Simple study designs in ecology produce inaccurate estimates of biodiversity responses

Christie

Amano

Martin

et al. 2019

Journal of Applied Ecology

211

254

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1. Monitoring the impacts of anthropogenic threats and interventions to mitigate these threats is key to understanding how to best conserve biodiversity. Ecologists use many different study designs to monitor such impacts. Simpler designs lacking controls (e.g. Before-After (BA) and After) or pre-impact data (e.g. Control-Impact (CI)) are considered to be less robust than more complex designs (e.g. Before-After Control-Impact (BACI) or Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs)). However, we lack quantitative estimates of how much less accurate simpler study designs are in ecology. Understanding this could help prioritize research and weight studies by their design's accuracy in meta-analysis and evidence assessment.2. We compared how accurately five study designs estimated the true effect of a simulated environmental impact that caused a step-change response in a population's density. We derived empirical estimates of several simulation parameters from 47 ecological datasets to ensure our simulations were realistic. We measured design performance by determining the percentage of simulations where: (a) the true effect fell within the 95% Confidence Intervals of effect size estimates, and (b) each design correctly estimated the true effect's direction and magnitude. We also considered how sample size affected their performance.3. We demonstrated that BACI designs performed: 1.3-1.8 times better than RCTs; 2.9-4.2 times versus BA; 3.2-4.6 times versus CI; and 7.1-10.1 times versus After designs (depending on sample size), when correctly estimating true effect's direction and magnitude to within ±30%. Although BACI designs suffered from low power at small sample sizes, they outperformed other designs for almost all performance measures. Increasing sample size improved BACI design accuracy, but only increased the precision of simpler designs around biased estimates. Synthesis and applications.We suggest that more investment in more robust designs is needed in ecology since inferences from simpler designs, even with large sample sizes may be misleading. Facilitating this requires longer-term funding and stronger research-practice partnerships. We also propose 'accuracy weights' and demonstrate how they can weight studies in three recent meta-analyses by | 2743

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“…

I

and

C

were varied using empirical estimates of the proportional change in control and impact sites in the before period versus the after period,

p_{I}

and

p_{C}

, respectively, sampled from 47 ecological datasets

(I

λ \cdot (p_{I} - 1)

;

C

λ \cdot (p_{C} - 1)

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Simple study designs in ecology produce inaccurate estimates of biodiversity responses

Christie

Amano

Martin

et al. 2019

Journal of Applied Ecology

211

254

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In response to the need for more rigorous impact assessments, many government agencies have initiated long‐term monitoring programs (Field et al 2007, Fancy et al 2009). Using such monitoring data, a before‐after‐control‐impact (BACI) statistical design (Stewart‐Oaten et al 1986, Underwood 1992, 1994), comparing affected sites with unaffected sites before and after an event, can help test for impacts such as occurred after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill (Dietl and Durham 2016, Lauritsen et al 2017). Recent simulation studies have reemphasized the advantages of BACI over alternative approaches such as before‐after, control‐impact and randomized control trials (Christie et al 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improving the ability of a BACI design to detect impacts within a kelp‐forest community

Rassweiler

Okamoto

Reed

et al. 2021

Ecological Applications

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Distinguishing between human impacts and natural variation in abundance remains difficult because most species exhibit complex patterns of variation in space and time. When ecological monitoring data are available, a before-after-control-impact (BACI) analysis can control natural spatial and temporal variation to better identify an impact and estimate its magnitude. However, populations with limited distributions and confounding spatial-temporal dynamics can violate core assumptions of BACI-type designs. In this study, we assessed how such properties affect the potential to identify impacts. Specifically, we quantified the conditions under which BACI analyses correctly (or incorrectly) identified simulated anthropogenic impacts in a spatially and temporally replicated data set of fish, macroalgal, and invertebrate species found on nearshore subtidal reefs in southern California, USA. We found BACI failed to assess very localized impacts, and had low power but high precision when assessing regionwide impacts. Power was highest for severe impacts of moderate spatial scale, and impacts were most easily detected in species with stable, widely distributed populations. Serial autocorrelation in the data greatly inflated false impact detection rates, and could be partly controlled for statistically, while spatial synchrony in dynamics had no consistent effect on power or false detection rates. Unfortunately, species that offer high power to detect real impacts were also more likely to detect impacts where none had occurred. However, considering power and false detection rates together can identify promising indicator species, and collectively analyzing data for similar species improved the net ability to assess impacts. These insights set expectations for the sizes and severities of impacts that BACI analyses can detect in real systems, point to the importance of serial autocorrelation (but not of spatial synchrony), and indicate how to choose the species, and groups of species, that can best identify impacts.

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“…Thus, intertidal reefs may respond to and recover from anthropogenic stressors such as oil spills very differently than do subtidal reefs. This difference may explain why Dietl & Durham (2016) found that the average size of living and dead oysters did not differ between oiled and unoiled intertidal reefs. Yet, Powers et al (2017b, this Theme Section) found that impacts of oiling resulted in the reduction of oyster habitat by up to 77% in areas that experienced heavy oiling.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 79%

Potential impacts of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill on subtidal oysters in the Gulf of Mexico

Grabowski¹,

Powers²,

Roman³

et al. 2017

Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser.

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The explosion of the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) drilling platform initiated an unprecedented chain of environmental perturbations that threatened sensitive nearshore habitats in the northern Gulf of Mexico in 2010. Here, we examined subtidal oyster reef populations monitored by state resource agencies prior to and after the DWH incident in the spring−summer of 2010. Fishery-independent surveys were conducted in each of the following Gulf States using either diver-collected quadrat samples (Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida) or dredge surveys (Texas) at fixed sites to assess trends in oyster density of recently settled (spat

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Geohistorical records indicate no impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on oyster body size

Cited by 11 publications

References 54 publications

Simple study designs in ecology produce inaccurate estimates of biodiversity responses

Simple study designs in ecology produce inaccurate estimates of biodiversity responses

Improving the ability of a BACI design to detect impacts within a kelp‐forest community

Potential impacts of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill on subtidal oysters in the Gulf of Mexico

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