“This is the seventh in a series of stories over the coming weeks looking at various topics related to the response, the Natural Resource Damage Assessment science, restoration efforts, and the future of the Gulf of Mexico. APRIL 17, 2015 — The Deepwater Horizon oil spill was the largest marine oil spill in U.S. history. In the wake of this massive pollution release, NOAA and other federal and state government scientists need to determine how much this spill and ensuing response efforts harmed the Gulf of Mexico’s natural resources, and define the necessary type and amount of restoration. That means planning a lot of scientific studies and collecting a lot of data on the spill’s impacts, an effort beginning within hours of the spill and continuing to this day. Scientists collected oil samples from across the Gulf Coast. Oil spill observers snapped photographs of oil on the ocean surface from airplanes. Oceanographic sensors detected oil in the water column near the Macondo wellhead. Biologists followed the tracks of tagged dolphins as they swam through the Gulf’s bays and estuaries. Scientists are using this type of information—and much more—to better understand and assess the impacts to the Gulf ecosystem and people’s uses of it. But what is the best way to gather together and organize what would become an unprecedented amount of data for this ongoing Natural Resource Damage Assessment process? Scientists from across disciplines, agencies, and the country needed to be able to upload their own data and download others’ data, in addition to searching and sorting through what would eventually amount to tens of thousands of samples and millions of results and observations… NOAA’s data warehouse currently holds validated damage assessment data from more than 53,000 water, tissue, oil, and sediment samples, which, once these samples were analyzed, have led to over 3.8 million analytical results, also stored within the new tool. Together, NOAA’s samples and analytical results have informed more than 16 scientific studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals, as well as many other academic and scientific publications. While not all of the data from the damage assessment are publicly available yet, you can access validated data collected through cooperative studies or otherwise made available through the Natural Resource Damage Assessment legal process. You can find validated data exported from NOAA’s digital data warehouse available for download on both the Natural Resource Damage Assessment website and NOAA’s interactive online mapping tool for this spill, the ERMA Deepwater Gulf Response website.”