, 2007b), and Nova Scotia ( Owens et al., 2011), among others. We wish to emphasize that these declining concentration rates (% day−1) are not ‘decay’ rates of specific molecules

that were all deposited in a single oiling event. The oil that was initially deposited in the marsh in 2010 underwent unequal degrees of decomposition, mixing, evaporation or burial across all sampling sites and had some additional oiling in 2012, and, perhaps, at other times. The decline in concentration is the result of changes in the concentration of a heterogeneous mixture of alkanes and aromatics Dinaciclib whose arrival into the marsh came at various times (e.g., Fig. 5 and Fig. 6), not all at one time; the oil may have arrived with an analyte mixture that was unequally decomposed or diluted as source

materials before marsh deposition, from one oiling event to another, or after deposition. There was a fourfold and sixfold increase in the average concentration BGJ398 chemical structure of target alkanes and PAHs, respectively, immediately after the passage of Hurricane Isaac over Port Sulphur, LA (28 September 2011), located a few km from our study sites. The pre- and post-Isaac data were from plots sampled within 0.5 m of the same plots and are in Fig. 9A and B. These storm conditions, supplemented by normal tidal inundations, would also re-distribute oil into relatively un-oiled wetlands, raising the lowest values, as well. It is interesting that these strong inundation events did not, apparently, dilute the oil concentrations in the wetland sediments. The interpretation of the degree of ‘restoration’ of the oiling of these wetlands depends, in part, on the metric used to define success. The concentration of total target alkanes and PAHs in June 2013 was unless about 1% and 5%, respectively, of the average values measured in February 2011. These numbers might be used

to argue that the wetland was between 99% and 95% restored at that time. The concentration of target alkanes, however, remained 3.6 times higher than the baseline values (May 2010) before the wetland oiling, and are 33 times higher than the baseline concentration of the PAHs. This suggests that impacted wetlands may take decades to recover to the pre-disaster (2010) conditions. We do not, therefore, anticipate a ‘quick’ restoration in these heavily impacted areas and recommend following the long-term persistence of the PAHs within these Louisiana marsh sediments. Most samples had some measurable petroleum hydrocarbons in them, both before the wetlands were oiled in 2010, and afterwards. The very lowest samples from reference sites, representing what we think were the recently un-oiled sites from 2010, averaged 0.98 ± 0.31 mg kg−1 of target alkanes and 23.89 ± 6.07 μg kg−1 of target PAHs, and have been increasing and remaining relatively high. The average of the lowest five concentrations of target alkanes and PAHs rose up to 131X and 829X, respectively, above the pre-oiled conditions (May 2010).