Abstract
Natural crude-oil seepages, together with the oil released into seawater as a consequence of oil exploration/production/transportation activities, and operational discharges from tankers (i.e., oil dumped during cleaning actions) represent the main sources of sea oil pollution. Satellite remote sensing can be a useful tool for the management of such types of marine hazards, namely oil spills, mainly owing to the synoptic view and the good trade-off between spatial and temporal resolution, depending on the specific platform/sensor system used. In this paper, an innovative satellite-based technique for oil spill detection, based on the general robust satellite technique (RST) approach, is presented. It exploits the multi-temporal analysis of data acquired in the visible channels of the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on board the Aqua satellite in order to automatically and quickly detect the presence of oil spills on the sea surface, with an attempt to minimize “false detections” caused by spurious effects associated with, for instance, cloud edges, sun/satellite geometries, sea currents, etc. The oil spill event that occurred in June 2007 off the south coast of Cyprus in the Mediterranean Sea has been considered as a test case. The resulting data, the reliability of which has been evaluated by both carrying out a confutation analysis and comparing them with those provided by the application of another independent MODIS-based method, showcase the potential of RST in identifying the presence of oil with a high level of accuracy.
Highlights
Oil spills cause the contamination of seawater, shores, and beaches, which may persist for several months, representing a serious hazard for marine resources and the ecosystem [1]
Remote Sens. 2017, 9, 128 of Mexico in April–May 2010 have been a clear representation of the importance of using satellite remote sensing in response to oil spills [4,5]
We use Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) 250 m spatial resolution been used to detect different oil spills occurred in different areas in the past
Summary
Oil spills cause the contamination of seawater, shores, and beaches, which may persist for several months, representing a serious hazard for marine resources and the ecosystem [1]. Satellite remote sensing might effectively contribute to mitigating the environmental impact of oil spills, provided that reliable and effective detection techniques are used, and relevant information and products may be quickly delivered and shared. 2017, 9, 128 of Mexico in April–May 2010 have been a clear representation of the importance of using satellite remote sensing in response to oil spills [4,5]. Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) currently represents the most widely used satellite system for oil spill detection, due to its capability to identify oil spills with a good level of reliability and high spatial resolution (from tens of meters up to 1 m) with all-weather and all-day detection [6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13]. Neither is the full deployment of the Copernicus ESA Sentinel-1 mission [19], finalized in April 2016 with the launch of the second satellite (i.e., Sentinel 1B), able to assure a temporal resolution better than three days at the equator
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