Authors: Agatha Cristinne Prudêncio Soares, Alexandra Elaine Rizzo, Alexandre Bigio Villas-Boas, Alexandre Fernandes Bamberg de Araujo, Alexandre Tadeu Politano, Alline Colli Dias, Ana Beatriz Aroeira Soares, Bruno Coutinho Kurtz, Caio Gomes, Carla Bernadete Madureira Cruz, Cristiane Carneiro Gomes, Diego Sperle, Dieter Muehe, Elisa Araujo Penna Caris, Elizabeth Maria Feitosa da Rocha de Souza, Estéfane Cardinot Reis, Fabiana Barbosa dos Santos, Fabio Di Dario, Flávia Moraes Lins de Barros, Gabriel Henrique da Silva, Jessica Cristina Saturno da Silva, Joel Christopher Creed, Leonardo Azevedo Klumb Oliveira, Leonardo Vidal Marques, Lia Osório Machado, Luana dos Santos Rosário, Luciana Finotti Tosin, Manoel do Couto Fernandes, Marcelo Bueno de Abreu, Marcia Abreu de Oliveira Figueiredo, Maria Cristina Ostrovski de Matos, Márcia dos Reis Gomes, Michael Maia Mincarone, Monika Richter, Oswaldo Luiz Peixoto, Paulo Márcio Leal de Menezes, Paulo Márcio Santos Costa, Paulo Ricardo Nucci, Pedro Henrique Ferreira Coura, Rafael Bessa, Rebeca Steiman, Renata dos Santos Gomes, Ricardo Silva Varotto, Rodrigo Castellari Gonzalez, Samir Khader, Simone Siag Oigman, Silvia Machado de Castro, Sirayama de Oliveira Ferreira Lima, Sulamita Oliveira Barbosa, Tereza Cristina Gonçalves da Silva, Vania Soares Alves.
Full ATLAS online: https://www.sciencedirect.com/book/9788535277357/atlas-de-sensibilidade-ambiental-ao-oleo
Deepocean environments have rapidly increased their economic importance for humanity as interest in their vast mineral and biological resources advances. Until recently, economic discussions about the oceans were concentrated mainly on the themes of fishery resources and international navigation. Such a context, coupled with the high costs and logistical difficulties for research in the region, contributes to the fact that the oceans are less scientifically known and less protected areas throughout the world. On the other hand, as science advances, we become more aware of the ecological importance of the environmental services provided by these ecosystems, whether due to their biodiversity, climate regulation capacity or their important biogeochemical cycles.
Aware of its responsibility to the environment in which it performs its activities, Petrobras articulates one of the largest programs in the world for deep water scientific characterization, involving the ecosystem study of several basins on the Brazilian coast. Research on the subject is complex and requires extensive collaborative and networked work by institutions in the regulatory, industry and academia fields. The Atlas work dimension is impressive, inaugurating a new regional oceanic research model in Brazil. The study involved experts from Petrobras and 20 Brazilian universities to cover, with scientific rigor, the geological, biological, physical and chemical aspects of the water column and sediments in more than 150,000 km2, about 3.5 times the area of the Rio de Janeiro state. There were more than 250 professionals, 8,500 ship hours, which corresponds to one year of offshore data collection, more than 20,000 chemical analyses and 10,000 biological analyses. The concern was also the conservation of the collected material, through investments in scientific collections, and the organization in a georeferenced database, with guarantee of equivalent procedures and in unified collections, for future use. In this way, the ATLAS aims to contribute to the structuring of a geographic database for the strategic perception of the Campos Basin, encompassing part of the states of Rio de Janeiro and Espírito Santo and thus contribute to constitute an important patrimony of Brazilian and world research on the subject.
The Campos Basin is about 100,000 km2 and extends from the north of Rio de Janeiro to the south of the State of Espírito Santo, covering different environments such as beaches, lagoons, “restingas”, mangroves and islands. The Campos Basin, which accounts for about 70% of national oil production and 35% of natural gas production in 2013 (Jablonski, 2008; ANP, 2013), oil and natural gas exploration and production activities (E&P) potentially add new threats to local marine biodiversity, associated with leakage and spillage of substances derived from petroleum hydrocarbons, extremely harmful to the health of the marine ecosystem (Silva et al., 2008). The activities related to the offshore oil and gas industry in the Campos Basin involve the productive concentration of extraction fields, terminals and oil and gas pipelines and the development of the network of suppliers of goods and services to production. In recent years, the activities in question have been expanded with the start of layers of the so-called pre-salt. The main consequence for the coastal zone of the basin has been the growth and expansion of urbanization in the coastal areas, fuelled both by the oil and gas production chain and by the royalties from the exploration received which have been destined mainly to tourism and very little infrastructure and measures to prevent and mitigate accidents related to oil spills in the coastal zone (Egler et al., 2013). In 2000, with the approval of the “Oil Law” (Brazil, 2000), Brazil defined the principles prevention and mitigation of pollution caused by leakage of oil and other harmful or dangerous substances in waters under national jurisdiction. Letters of sensitivity to oil leakage in coastal areas began to be elaborated with the ultimate objective of helping to reduce and mitigate the environmental impacts caused by oil spills and guide the efforts of containment, cleaning and oil removal, by identifying the sensitivity of coastal and marine ecosystems, their biological resources and socioeconomic activities that characterize the occupation of the spaces and the use of coastal and marine resources (Gherardi et al., 2008). Many data on the occurrence of fish species, marine invertebrates, marine chelonians and cetaceans in the area of influence of the Campos Basin were compiled and inserted into the Environmental Sensitivity Information System (MAPS), in order to generate oil spill sensitivity maps. All the information registered in this system was made available on a geo-referenced cartographic basis to support the decision making in cases of environmental accidents involving this oil spill.
OPPORTUNITY TO BRAZIL: Throughout the world, protected areas represent important instruments for the in situ conservation of biodiversity. Brazil, by its nature, occupies a prominent position among megabiodiverse countries. It has some of the richest biomes on the planet in number of plant species, such as the Amazon, the Atlantic Forest and the Cerrado. Among the Brazilian biomes, the Atlantic Forest is considered one of the global hotspots due to its reduced current remnants and high degree of threat from deforestation. The Campos Basin is fully integrated into the Atlantic Forest biome, which also includes what is the South Atlantic coastal marine biome. This extensive area is an important coastal zone, of great economic, social and ecological value. The exploitation of this territory requires a large infrastructure in terms of operations / facilities, both onshore and offshore, such as platforms, pipelines for the outflow of production, support bases, storage tanks, emissaries for the disposal of treated waters, as well as complex ship-supply operations and transportation of production (ANP, 2003).
CHALLENGES FOR RESEARCH: To represent the environmental sensitivity of the Campos Basin, it is necessary to have multidisciplinary teams in the areas of Geomorphology, Socioeconomics and Biology (fish, aquatic mammals, terrestrial mammals, reptiles, amphibians, birds, marine invertebrates, habitats and special plants. This information needs to be made available in an organized way, both in the form of maps and database. The limited knowledge of biodiversity can be explained by the lack of publications, especially those of a taxonomic nature. Most of the publications come from “gray” literature, ie information disseminated in a report (research, technical, projects), summaries and annals of symposiums and congresses, often with restricted or limited disclosure. Consequently, the lack of manuals, catalogues or regional guides makes it impossible to determine the rare or eventual species occurrences. It is fundamental to carry out studies throughout the region and to publish more comprehensively the data obtained. One of the major challenges in this process is the significant investments in data collection in order to reduce information gaps and keep the database updated.
DeepSea International Consortium 