The Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Incident has impacted many aspects of the coastal environment and the people living in the coastal states. The general public, government officials, and journalists would like to get a general, big picture of the impact, and Gulf-based researchers would like to investigate the fate and effects of oil, dispersed oil, and dispersant on the ecosystems of the Gulf of Mexico and affected coastal states. The topic map we have developed serves to facilitate not only the understanding of the impacts of the incident but also knowledge discovery through interdisciplinary knowledge fusion. Although the topic map focuses on the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Incident, it also covers oil spill incidents and concerns elsewhere.
A topic map has three constructs: (1) topics (or concepts), (2) associations (or relationships, links) between the topics, (3) information resources relevant to a given topic. You will be able to see all three of these on the topic map. By scanning the topics and their relationships, you can get a big picture of the topics and focus on the information resources that relate most significantly to your interest, and hopefully discover new knowledge by integrating the knowledge from multiple disciplines.
Please visit our User Guides to get an idea of how to navigate through the topic map, and its textual interface.
Oil Spill Topic Map 