Towards improving the representation of beaching in oil spill models: A case study

Oil-shoreline interaction (or “beaching” as commonly referred to in literature) is an issue of major concern in oil spill modeling, due to the significant environmental, social and economic importance of coastal areas. The present work studies the improvement of the representation of beaching brought by the introduction of the Oil Holding Capacity approach to estimate oil concentration on coast, along with new approaches for coast type assignment to shoreline segments and the calculation of permanent oil attachment to the coast. The above were tested for the Lebanon oil spill of 2006, using a modified version of the open-source oil spill model MEDSLIK-II. The modified model results were found to be in good agreement with field observations for the specific case study, and their comparison with the original model results denote the significant improvement in the fate of beached oil brought by the proposed changes.