Abstract

Offshore oil spills represent a major polluting potential in the marine environment [1,2]. Oil spill surveillance is a major part of contingency planning (Jha et al., 2008) and remote sensing techniques enable mapping these events in outlying areas. With essential information such as backscatter and polarimetry data that further the oil spill detection (Shinga et al., 2013). Therefore, the use of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data for mapping ocean oil spills has been widely applied, as well as the identification of oil on the ocean surface is independent of weather conditions and solar incidence [3]. As mineral oil has hydrophobic constituents, can persist on the ocean surface in the form of multiple layers [4].

Keywords: Backscatter; Polarimetry; Oil spill detection; Synthetic aperture radar; Geochemical oil; Petroleum

Abbreviations:SAR: Synthetic Aperture Radar; GRD: Ground Range Detected; NRCS: Normalized Radar Cross Section