Figure 1.
Principal components analysis of environmental and biological variables.
(A) PC1 and PC2 vector loads for barium (Ba), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPH), percent mud content of sediment (Mud), aluminum (Al), nematode to copepod ratio (N:C), meiofauna abundance (Mei_Abun), macrofauana abundance (Mac_Abun), macrofauna Hill’s N1 diversity index (Mac_N1), and meiofauna Hill’s N1 diversity index (Mei_N1). (B) PC1 and PC3 vector loads. (C) PC1 station scores, where each station is labeled as distance in km from the wellhead.
Table 1.
Pearson correlation coefficients (and probability levels) for the principal component station scores and station locations with respect to depth (m), distance from the wellhead (km), and distance from seeps (km).
Figure 2.
PC 1 station scores (Fig. 1) plotted as Jenks natural breaks.
Map includes bathymetry in meters and locations of seeps.
Figure 3.
PC 1 station scores (Fig. 1) zoomed into the 40 km from the wellhead, and plotted as Jenks natural breaks.
Map includes bathymetry in meters and locations of seeps.
Table 2.
Percent change relative to overall mean for benthic community response in zones identified in Figs. 2–3.
Figure 4.
Interpolated area of deep sea impact based on PC1 station scores.
The interpolated area shown covers 70,166 km2 of which 167 km2 (orange) are considered moderately impacted and 24 km2 (red) are considered severely impacted.
Figure 5.
Interpolated area of deep sea impact based on PC1 station scores.
The interpolated area of the zoomed in map covers 6,350 km2 of which 148 km2 (orange) are considered moderately impacted and 24 km2 (red) are considered severely impacted.