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Top 20 Institutions

The institutions lists show a global flavor, albeit with a heavy bias to the Americas: of the 37 unique institutions on the list, there are 15 from the US, nine from Canada, and one from South America.

REUTERS/Vincent West



REUTERS/Victor Fraile

Certainly the Valdez spill has generated a high volume of research for US-based institutions. The University of Alaska, the USGS, NOAA, the University of California, Davis, Oregon State University, the US Fish & Wildlife Service, and the University of California, Santa Barbara, have all examined the Valdez spill in some form or another, from the effects on flora and fauna to the persistence of oil in Prince William Sound and other locations.

Canadian researchers are publishing significant work about both spills and remediation. Environment Canada has published papers on the effects of oil spills, analysis of petroleum biomarkers, and treatments for oil-contaminated shoreline sediments. Fisheries & Oceans Canada has examined the long-term effects of the 1970 grounding of the tanker Arrow in Nova Scotia, as well as the 2000 OSSA II pipeline spill. The University of Waterloo, the University of Regina, and the University of Alberta are involved in petroleum microbiology.

Spanish institutions, like the CSIC and the University of Vigo, are concerned with oil spills closer to home, specifically the Prestige spill of 2002, and the Aegean Sea spill of 1992. Similarly, researchers at Kuwait University are largely concerned with recovery in the Arabian Gulf after the Gulf War oil spill. The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and Innsbruck University are largely concerned with remediation techniques.

Although neither their researchers nor their papers made the top 20 lists, both the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Sciences have a variety of interests, ranging from remediation techniques, ecological concerns, investigations into oil-contaminated soils, and using radar imagery to map spills.