Oil spill detection using a time series of images acquired off Norway in June 2015 with the uninhabited aerial vehicle synthetic aperture radar is examined. The relative performance of a set of features derived from quad-polarization versus hybrid-polarity (HP) modes in detection of various types of slicks as they evolve on a high wind driven sea surface is evaluated. It is shown that the HP mode ...

Evolution of the damping ratio for Bragg wavenumbers in the range 32-43 rad/m is evaluated for oil slicks of different composition released in the open ocean and allowed to develop naturally. The study uses quad-polarimetric L-band airborne synthetic aperture radar data acquired over three mineral oil emulsion releases of different, known oil-to-water ratio, and a near-coincident release of 2-ethylhexyl ...

In a synthetic aperture radar image, low backscatter regions of various origin can be observed in ocean areas. Operational oil spill detection services work to discriminate anthropogenic oil spills from natural phenomena such as seeps, low wind fields, thin ice and biogenic slicks. In this paper, we investigate the potential of using matrix log-cumulants for this purpose.

The objective of this paper is to investigate the dependency of oil spill observations in polarimetric SAR data on imaging geometry, i.e., on incidence angle and look direction relative to the wind. The study is based on quad-polarization data acquired by the Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar over experimental oil slicks under relatively high winds of 10–12 m/s over an 8-hour period. ...

A simple automatic multipolarization technique for discrimination of main types of thin oil films (of thickness less than the radio wave skin depth) from natural ones is proposed. It is based on a new multipolarization parameter related to the ratio between the damping in the slick of specially normalized resonant and nonresonant signals calculated using the normalized radar cross-section model ...

This study is devoted to a generalization of C-band Radarsat-2 and X-band TerraSAR-X synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data in the form of a diagram serving to easily identify mineral oil slicks (crude oil and emulsions) and separate them from the other oil slicks. The diagram is based on the multi-polarization parameter called Resonant to Non-resonant signal Damping (RND) introduced by Ivonin et al. ...

In this paper, we present the experimental setup and data collection during the Norwegian Radar oil Spill Experiment 2015, followed by a comparison of a subset of the multisensory synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery collected during the experiment. Multipolarization SAR data acquired by Radarsat-2, TerraSAR-X, and the uninhabited aerial vehicle synthetic aperture radar (UAVSAR) less than 6 min ...

In this chapter, the most promising techniques to observe oil slicks and to detect metallic targets at sea using polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data are reviewed and critically analysed. The detection of oil slicks in SAR data is made difficult not only by the presence of speckle but also by the presence of, e.g. biogenic films, low-wind areas, rain cells, currents, etc., which increase ...

We show that indications of spatial dispersion effects on mineral oil slicks are observed by space-borne multipolarization synthetic aperture radar. This is readily perceived by eye when correlating multipolarization synthetic aperture radar observables with the ship track of the dispersion vessel. We investigate real full-polarimetric (linear transmit/linear receive) as well as simulated and real ...

Maritime activities in the Arctic Ocean is increasing and consequently the risk for an oil spill there is rising. Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is used operationally to detect and monitor oil slicks and for sea ice monitoring and observations. Leads are often used for ship routing and within the leads newly formed sea ice is often present. Separation between the low backscatter areas that constitutes ...