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that question by using its unique capacity to document the distribution of the oil on the ocean surface. The LSU Earth Scan Laboratory (ESL) was founded in 1988 with a grant from the Louisiana Education Quality Support Fund. The ESL is a fully functional satellite ground station. It receives real-time data from a variety of satellites and translates that information into various data formats and different types of photographic images. The system is routinely used to track drifting buoys in the Gulf of Mexico to document and study ocean circulation patterns, and to capture sea surface temperature data. The satellite system at the ESL provided some of the first and most memorable images of the surface oil slick that remain Figure 4.4 The oil spill as seen from satellite. emblazoned in the memories of many people. Its real-time capacity allowed visual tracking of the surface slick in the days and weeks following the Deepwater Horizon spill. Notably, no other college or university in the state of Louisiana has this degree of satellite-data capturing capacity, and there are only a few in the entire southeastern region of the U.S. Faculty and staff affiliated with the ESL were some of the first in the academic community to step up to the public service challenge of the spill, and played a critical role in visually documenting the sea surface distribution of the oil.