We hope you can join this lecture — part of the monthly lecture series, You Don't Know What You Don't Know!

This month, we begin a "NOAA OR&R 101" series, to introduce you to some of the services provided by NOAA's Office of Response and Restoration. Our first presentation will be by John Tarpley, Regional Operations Branch Chief of OR&R's Emergency Response Division. John will discuss Environmental Tradeoffs. As an example: When a shoreline is threatened by an approaching oil spill, responders must quickly decide which shoreline locations to protect (setting their protection priorities), then determine which of those locations they can protect — given the resources available to them. Making these decisions sometimes requires difficult tradeoffs.

John Tarpley is currently Chief of the Regional Operations Branch of NOAA OR&R's Emergency Response Division, where he manages the scientific support staff and spill response programs nationwide that provide scientific support to the U.S. Coast Guard for oil and hazardous material spills, and serve as natural resource trustees. John also currently serves as the DOC/NOAA representative to the National Response Team.

John has over 28 years of experience in oil spill response, contingency planning, Natural Resource Damage Assessment, and habitat restoration at state and national levels. He has responded to and managed hundreds of oil and chemical spills across the nation, including the Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon oil spills. In 2010, John served as NOAA’s primary representative on the U.S. Coast Guard’s Incident Specific Preparedness Review (ISPR) for the Deepwater Horizon incident. In 2019, he was selected for a Pacific States-British Columbia Oil Spill Task Force Legacy Award. John has a Master’s degree in marine ecology.  

Mark your calendar for the third Thursday of the month — and please feel free to share the series with others in the professional spill planning, response, and environmental science communities.