Earth Stewardship: An Initiative by the Ecological Society of America to Foster Engagement to Sustain Planet Earth - Earth Stewardship: Linking Ecology and Ethics in Theory and Practice - page 175

Box 12.1 (continued)
Fig. 12.1 BioBlitz collaboration between ESA students and local community members
ESA Graduate Student Response to the BP Oil Spill of 2010
In response to the British Petroleum (BP) oil rig explosion and fi re of April
2010, Student Section chair Rob Salguero-Gomez and chair-elect Jorge
Ramos harnessed the enthusiasm, energy, networking skills, and commitment
to the environment of ESA's student membership. They assembled metadata
from the work of ecologists, both ESA members and others, documenting
pre-spill conditions in estuaries, shorelines, and marine environments in the
affected states along the Gulf Coast. Mark Stromberg of the University of
California Natural Reserve System shared database software developed by the
Organization for Biological Field Stations, which was subsequently tweaked
by ESA web-developers. Student section leaders and ESA SEEDS students
assembled an ESA database on research and researchers with relevant pre-
spill information and shared this with research institutions, agencies, and
local universities working on spill assessment and recovery. Through listservs
and social networks, ecologists and other scientists learned about the effort
and emailed datasets and photographs to the ESA's Student Section. Jorge and
Rob collated the information, made it available via ESA's website to resource
managers in the affected Gulf Coast states. ESA Student Section leaders and
Public Affairs staff also distributed a compilation of state-specifi c links for
opportunities to volunteer with clean-up and rescue of oiled wildlife ( http://
www.esa.org/esablog/research/conservation/taking-action-what-is-being-
done-and-what-you-can-do-for-the-gulf/ ) (Ramos et al. 2012 ).