5). Oil spill prediction (Fig. 6) were simulated for South Crete near the natural port of Kaloi Limenes (Location 1), where an oil storage and terminal facility are located, and Ierapetra (Location 2) – comprising a main tourism area. Additionally, these areas were selected based on environmental and demographic buy NVP-LDE225 criteria (Kassomenos, 2004), as they comprise regions in South Crete where large towns occur, or where NATURA 2000 sites occur close to the shoreline (Fig. 7). The MEDSLIK oil slick predictions for Locations 1 and 2 present the trajectory of an assumed oil slick with 10,000 tonnes, with a dominant current

direction from SE to NW away for the coast to E–W near to the coast (Fig. 6). In the two oil spill models for Locations 1 and 2, the oil slick thickness ranges between 0 and 16.86 mm. In the case of Kaloi Limenes (Location 1, Fig. 6a) the oil slick moved through the Gulf of Tympaki, affecting the coast of Agia Galini as well as part of the eastern coast of Crete. In the case of Ierapetra (Location 2, Fig. 6b), the oil slick affected the low-lying beaches that extend west of Ierapetra (Figs. 4c and 6b). Considering the arrival times for buy Cyclopamine the two cases, the spill arrives to the shore approximately 94 h after the oil spill accident in Kaloi Limenes (Location 1), and 38 h after the accident in Ierapetra (Location 2) (Fig.

6). The final outcome of the Iso Cluster Unsupervised Classification is a hazard map showing which marine and nearshore areas will be primarily affected in case of an oil spill accident in Locations 1 and 2 (Fig. 8). These maps were compiled taking into account

the derivatives of the bathymetry (slope and aspect), geomorphologic factors, and current direction orienting E–W to SE–NW. The division of a probability map into categories was performed for visualization Selleck CHIR 99021 purposes and does not imply a discrete zonation of the study area in safe and unsafe places (Begueria and Lorente, 2003 and Lamelas et al., 2008). These values were categorized into five classes for the case of Kaloi Limenes (more sensitive) and four classes for the area of Ierapetra, corresponding to different susceptibility levels (very low, low, moderate, high and very high). In particular, high and very high susceptibility zones are strongly related to bathymetric features, rugged shoreline profiles, and the direction of surface and deeper marine currents. In the early 1980s, over three quarters of a million tonnes of oil were estimated to have been introduced annually into the Mediterranean Sea from land-based and open-sea discharges (Burns and Saliot, 1986). Most of these discharges result from ships navigating in international waters with a minor amount resulting from drilling (Ferraro et al., 2007 and European Environmental Agency, 2013).