| Abstract | Chronic pollution from frequent inputs of individually small oil volumes released by marine traffic, tanker and off-shore operations, pipe-line seeps and direct or river-borne waste-water discharges is arguably a greater threat to coastal environments than a single, catastrophic spill. Hence it is vital that an environmental monitoring and information system such as that envisaged for GMES can detect smaller spills and discharges containing oil mixed with water. Techniques to do this reliably do not yet exist, and can only become feasible through a better understanding of the processes that control the formation and movement of oil and other organic slicks, and the factors that determine their appearance in SAR images. Knowledge of the environmental conditions that give rise to oil look-alikes, and a multi-sensor approach to obtaining this background information are also required. Increasing scientific understanding of these processes, and using it to create improved detection algorithms through synergistic satellite observations, in-situ measurements, and mathematical modelling is the over-arching aim of this project.
The problems will be addressed through a research programme with 4 major component tasks:
1.Synergistic use of satellite data to monitor water quality and provide background information.
2.Passive and active microwave remote sensing of parameters controlling the formation, transport and evolution of oil slicks.
3.Experimental studies involving sampling of marine pollutant films and laboratory measurements their physical characteristics, which influence their wave-damping capacity, combined with the mathematical modelling of wave damping and the scattering of electromagnetic waves at radar frequencies.
4.The development of image interpretation algorithms that set out the criteria for identifying different features commonly seen in radar images, the use of these criteria in automatic classification techniques, and the development of models to interpret multi-sensor information about coastal small-scale processes.
The algorithms developed will be disseminated to other scientists and potential end users in several ways: Through scientific papers and conferences, through international projects concerned with operational monitoring and regional capacity building (IOC/GOOS and EC projects), and through lesson materials used to train current and future remote sensing scientists and environmental managers.
The project consortium is eminently suited to taking on the task it has set itself. The participating teams have strong backgrounds in satellite remote sensing; their joint expertise includes all the main sensor types on current satellite missions, and their application to the study of coastal and oceanographic processes, environmental monitoring and the provision of information for operational oil spill response. The team members have extensive experience from field work in the areas they will study, and several teams are involved in modelling, both of wave-damping by organic surface films, and back-scattering of radar signals by surface waves. All this gives the project a high chance of successfully achieving its aim of developing a reliable method for routine monitoring of oil pollution in coastal waters. |
