Natural Habitat Vulnerability Modeling Critical to Contingency Planning for Areas Susceptible to Potential Spill Impact from Crude Oil Facilities in Niger Delta Nigeria

Abstract

Natural habitats vulnerability to the oil spill was performed using the ArcGIS 10.3.1 and its Spatial Analyst extension. The input variables were land use land cover imagery, pipelines, wellheads and a flow station. The oil spill was modeled as a function of spread through land uses. Impedance function was applied to oil spill spread through the landscape for an oil well, pipeline and flow station. Total function risk was modeled as the iteration of aggregate oil facility cost surface (likelihood) and environmental sensitivity cost surface (consequence). Three classes generated were high, medium and low vulnerability surfaces. The surfaces were used to extract land-use and landcover susceptible to any potential spill impact from three scenarios generated within three buffer zones of 50meter, 100m and 150 meter using GIS overlay techniques. Each vulnerability surface within the defined buffers was able to quantify pixels of land-use and landcover types susceptible to the risk of a potential oil spill. When utilized correctly at an appropriate scale and spatial resolution, raster-pixel based vulnerability surfaces have the potential to be effective tools in Contingency planning and response to inland oil spills.