ABSTRACT
Oil spills resulting from accidents or hostilities are probably the most detrimental man-made disaster impacting the marine ecosystem. The direct and indirect adverse effects caused by large oil spills on the natural œora and fauna may take several years to achieve satisfactory environmental mitigation through natural processes (Hawkins
4.1 Introduction .................................................................................................... 57 4.2 Physical Properties of Oil ............................................................................... 59 4.3 Classižcation of Crude Oil ............................................................................. 61 4.4 Fate of Oil Over the Water Surface ................................................................ 61
4.4.1 Environmental Parameters That Impact Oil at Sea ............................ 61 4.4.1.1 Temperature ......................................................................... 61 4.4.1.2 Wind and Sea Currents ........................................................ 62
4.5 Remote Sensing of Oil Spills .......................................................................... 63 4.5.1 Detecting Oil Spills Using SAR ......................................................... 63 4.5.2 Detecting Oil Spills Using MODIS ....................................................65 4.5.3 Comparison of Imagery between MODIS and SAR .......................... 67 4.5.4 Oil Spill Look-Alikes ......................................................................... 67
4.6 The Development and Application of the OSI ................................................69 4.6.1 OSI Theoretical Background .............................................................. 71
4.6.1.1 Estimating Oil Viscosity Group........................................... 73 4.6.2 OSI Application on Surface Algae ..................................................... 75 4.6.3 OSI Application on Oil Spill .............................................................. 75
4.7 Conclusions ..................................................................................................... 79 Acknowledgments .................................................................................................... 79 References ................................................................................................................ 79
and Southward 1992; Shigenaka et al. 1997; Hayes et al. 2005). The 1991 Gulf War was a salient example of a massive oil spill incident during which the release from the Kuwaiti oil wells into the Gulf was about 4 to 6 million gallons of crude oil and 732 oil wells were set on žre (Abdali and Al-Yakoob 1994). Recently, the Gulf of Mexico experienced the world’s worst accidental oil spill from the Deepwater Horizon oil well on April 20, 2010, where scientists estimated that 205 million gallons (4.9 million barrels) of oil had spewed from the leaking well 5000 feet below sea surface. This event affected an area equivalent to the size of Oklahoma and fouled over 960 km (600 miles) of beaches and wetlands spreading across žve states (Norse and Amos 2010). A wealth of supporting data provided by satellite imagery during these two major accidents conžrmed that remote sensing for oil spill disaster management is considered an indispensable tool to combat such an impact. The role of remote sensing in relation to oil spills starts with the early warnings issued upon their occurrence and then continues with the monitoring of their evolution in space and time, providing quantitative mapping information such as thickness estimates during the event.
