Abstract

Detection of natural or accidental oil slick at sea surface is important both for exploration purposes and for environment protection. Radar imagery, either satellite or airborne is the prime tool to detect those slicks. Radar is widely used by the national agencies to monitor their maritime areas for accidental pollutions or boat discharges. Radar images can detect oil slick even in the presence of clouds. However the sea surface back scattered energy is rather insensitive to oil thickness. On the contrary several studies tend to prove that optical data may be used to estimate the oil thickness. These data may be in the form of hyperspectral data or thermal infrared data. The objective of this study is to show that SWIR satellite data which are more widely available than hyperspectral data, better resolved than thermal data and available at a very limited cost, can be used to detect and qualitatively assess the thickness of oil slicks. This is important to assess volumes of naturally release oil in the oceans and in case of a crisis to send intervention teams where oil is thickest.

Highlights

  • Detection of oil slicks is of prime importance for national agencies dealing with the protection of their coasts and environment

  • False color images with bands taken in the NIR, and Short Wave Infrared (SWIR) bands, for example 1.2, 1.7 and 2.2 μm should highlight the thick patches of oil

  • Satellite image analysis confirms that only thick patches are highlighted by the SWIR wavelengths

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Summary

INTRODUCTION

Detection of oil slicks is of prime importance for national agencies dealing with the protection of their coasts and environment. Oil at sea surface appears as black patches on radar images. This damping mechanism is relatively insensitive to the oil thickness. During daytime the thick dark slick absorbs the sun energy, while thin slicks are at the same temperature as the underlying water and appear cooler than water as a consequence of lower emissivity of oil compared to water (+/-0.96 vs +/- 0.98). Satellites such as Landsat, or Aster, provide thermal bands with a resolution of 60 to 100m.

OIL CHARACTERIZATION IN THE NIR-SWIR DOMAIN
QUALITATIVE DETECTION OF THICK HYDROCARBONS
CONCLUSIONS

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