Detection of oil spill pollution on water surface using microwave remote sensing techniques

Abstract

Oil spill pollution is a major threat to ecosystem of different water surfaces; therefore, many researches and resources are deployed and to monitor and detect oil spills on water surfaces. Many of these are still in the developing process as a new researches and techniques are always presented to the subject. Ocean and river pollution monitoring, including oil spills, is mainly performed by using microwave energy due to its ability to operate during day and night and its capability to penetrate through fog and clouds. Therefore, this study is focused on the mechanism and parameters used to detect oil spills through SAR images based on backscattering microwave energy. In this study an analysis is conducted on SAR image containing oil spill with semi-automated processing to process the image and create final image with oil spill detected in it, with monitoring the oil spill fate by examining a later date image on the same area. The results are very useful to further researches on the same field. This paper is considered important in Iraq as the technology used and resources and relatively new with no previous research conducted along the same approach in Iraq.