List of Abbreviations CIIAPTER ONE General Introduction Pollution of Saudi Arabian soil with crude oil Chemistry and biodegradability of petroleum hydrocarbon Environmental fate of petroleum Factors influencing petroleum hydrocarbon biodegradation Distribution of petroleum-utilizing microorganisms in the environment Biological degradation of petroleum hydrocarbon Bacterial degradation of oil Fu...

With the rapid development of the petroleum industry, a large number of oil contaminants leaked into the soil in the petrochemical complex areas, gas stations, automobile factory and other places, which resulted in serious soil contamination. Micro-Biological degradation of oil pollution was the focus of the present study. Many hydrocarbon-contaminated environments were characterized by low or ...

The acute toxic effect of different crude oils (heavy crude oil and bonny light crude oil) on embryos of marine medaka Oryzias melastigma was measured and evaluated by exposure to the water-accommodated fraction (WAF) in the present study. The cardiac function of medaka embryos was used as target organ of ecotoxicological effect induced by oil exposure. Results showed that the developing marine...

Petroleum hydrocarbons are important energy resources used by industry and in our daily life, whose production contributes highly to environmental pollution. To control such risk, bioremediation constitutes an environmentally friendly alternative technology that has been established and applied. It constitutes the primary mechanism for the elimination of hydrocarbons from contaminated sites by ...

In response to changing laws as well as increased concern over environmental pollution, there is a current need to examine the best means of disposal of wash water generated by mosquito abatement operations. A study of wash waters from 6 central California mosquito abatement districts shows that herbicide levels were low enough so as not to preclude the use of these waters for recycling back in...

The dramatic consequences of oil or chemical spills for coastal ecosystems and economic uses make contingency management a politically sensitive task. We here propose a new Decision Support System (DSS) consisting of a combination of modeling and evaluation methods with which different containment strategies can be compared in the light of a variety of potential ecological and economic damages....

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data from RADARSAT-1 are an important operational data source for several ice centres around the world. Sea ice monitoring has been the most successful real-time operational application for RADARSAT-1 data. These data are used by several national ice services as a mainstay of their programs. Most recently, Canadian Ice Service launched another new real-time operat...

The impacts of diffuse urban sources of pollution on watercourses are quantified. A survey of nine urban streams in Scotland for persistent pollutants in stream sediments is described, together with sediments from SUDS ponds. Determinands reported are: PAHs, total hydrocarbons, and toxic metals (As, Zn, Ni, Pb, Cu, Cr, Cd). Results highlight hydrocarbons as a major urban pollutant, and show sig...

This study evaluated pollution levels in water and sediments of Península de Paraguaná and related these levels with benthic macrofauna along a coastal area where the largest Venezuelan oil refineries have operated over the past 60 years. For this, the concentration of heavy metals, of hydrocarbon compounds and the community structure of the macrobenthos were examined at 20 sites distributed al...

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are widespread in marine ecosystems and originate from natural sources and anthropogenic activities. PAHs enter the marine environment in two main ways, corresponding to chronic pollution or acute pollution by oil spills. The global PAH fluxes in marine environments are controlled by the microbial degradation and the biological pump, which plays a role in...