The Effects of the Application of Random Sampling on the Analysis of the Biodegradation of Oil Spills in Soil

Abstract

James G. Speight and Karuna Arjoon

Random sampling is a part of the sampling technique in which each sample has an equal probability of being chosen. A sample chosen randomly is meant to be an unbiased representation of the total population. If for some reasons, the sample does not represent the population, the variation is called a sampling error. Thus, an unbiased random sample is important for drawing conclusions in all issues, especially when the issue relates to environmental cleanup. Biodegradation focuses largely on the cleanup of petroleum hydro carbons and the past decades have seen challenges arise in order to make biodegradation technology appropriate and productive. This is because oil spills composition varies in locations as crude oil is a mixture of thousands of organic compounds that vary from one source to another. The purpose of this work was to determine the reliability of the random sampling method on oil spills which clean up sometimes cause s more harm than the oil spill itself. Random sampling is the basis for all probability sampling techniques used in soil sampling and serves as a reference point from which modifications to increase the efficiency of sampling are evaluated. Therefore its effectiveness was measured using Oil and Grease and Total Petroleum Hydrocarbon analysis of the biodegraded soil.

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