Hence most of the mangroves and marshes in the wetlands along the affected coast was destroyed by the oil. Here the oil caused considerable damage and caused primarily by the physical characteristics of the oil on the vegetation and on animals in the intertidal zone. The oil on the SAudi Arabian coastline ende up in shallow lagoons, wetlands and flats covered with vegetation. Some oil ended up on the beaches of Kuwait, Iran, Bahrain, and Qatar but generally these countries were less affected. About 700 km of Saudi Arabian shoreline consisting of sand, gravel, wetlands, lagoons, and muddy tidal flats and a total of the surfacve area of about 34 km2 was contaminated. the spill was broken up from several smaller spills which contaminated most of the Saudi Arabian coastline. the oil was released from tank farms on land (Al Ahmadi North), oil loading terminals (Sea Island and Mina Al-Bakr (Iraq)) and from oil carriers anchored along the Kuwait coast. The "marine environment" was exposed to large quantities of petroleum hydrocarbons, the volume of the spills has been estimated to between 1 and 1.7 million tons. However, at that stage much of the surface area of the oil lakes were covered by sand and could hardly be observed from the sky. The total area of oil lakes calculated based on satellite image in 1998 was about 24 km2. The oil has subsequently the ground to varying depth, depending on the nature of underlying soil. In 1992 the figure had decresaed to about 50 km2, partly due to weathering, penetrating of oil into the ground, coverage of oil by dust and sand, and physical removal. During 1991, up to 200 km2 of ground was covered with oil forming about 250 lakes. The total volume of oil din these lakes and rivers has been estimated to between 10 and 20 million tons. The oil from the oil wells formed networks of rivers and lakes on land. the vegetation as well as wildlife was exposed to this fallout but no or very scattered information is available about environmental aspects. Soot and oil covered extensive areas in Kuwait, Northern Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. Temperatures were up to 10 degrees C lower than under normal years. The high volume of particles in the air had a very pronounced effect on the climate in Kuwait and in the neighboring countries. As a result the soot did not spread over large areas but fell out with rain and dew mostly over the Arabian Peninsula. Most of the soot particles accumulated at altitudes between 10 meters and very little contamination reached higher than 5000 meters. this corresponds to 10% of the global contribution from anthropogenic burning of recent and fossil fuels. Levels of particles in the air a few kilometers from the burning oil fields was in the order of about 10 5 per cm3. The CO2 emission from the burning oil and gas in Kuwait has been estimated to about 130 to 140 million tons corresponding to 2-3% of the global annual anthropogenic contribution from the use of fossil and recent fuels and only 0.1% of the total global CO2 emission. ![]() The soot emissions for the burning oil and gas has been estimated to about 20,000 tons per day and the total SO2 emission about 24,000 tons per day. The maximum amount of oil and gas in the oil fires was about 355,000 tons and 35 million m3 respectively per day. During the period up to October 1991 all the wells were capped. In early 1991 more than 800 oil wells were blown up, of these more than 600 caught fire and burned with flames and about 50 wells gushed oil onto the ground. When considering the various aspects of air and atmospheric pollution, in brief summary, the following observations have been made: The follow-up studies have showed a rather different picture than what had been forecasted. Various scenarios and forecasts had been made before the war about the possible and probable impacts under different conditions. The environmental consequences of the Gulf War in 1991 affected the air, the marine environment, and the terrestrial ecosystem.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |