Martine M. Espeseth

Measurement and modeling of oil slick transport

Transport characteristics of oil slicks are reported from a controlled release experiment conducted in the North Sea in June 2015, during which mineral oil emulsions of different volumetric oil fractions and a look-alike biogenic oil were released and allowed to develop naturally. The experiment used the Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) to track slick location, size, and shape for ∼8 hours following release. Wind conditions during the exercise were at the high end of the range considered suitable for radar-based slick detection, but the slicks were easily detectable in all images acquired by the low noise, L-band imaging radar. The measurements are used to constrain the entrainment length and representative droplet radii for oil elements in simulations generated using the OpenOil advanced oil drift model. Simultaneously released drifters provide near-surface current estimates for the single biogenic release and one emulsion release, and are used to test model sensitivity to upper ocean currents and mixing. Results of the modeling reveal a distinct difference between the transport of the biogenic oil and the mineral oil emulsion, in particular in the vertical direction, with faster and deeper entrainment of significantly smaller droplets of the biogenic oil. The difference in depth profiles for the two types of oils is substantial, with most of the biogenic oil residing below depths of 10 m, compared to the majority of the emulsion remaining above 10 m depth. This difference was key to fitting the observed evolution of the two different types of slicks. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Hybrid-Polarity and Reconstruction Methods for Sea Ice With L- and C-Band SAR

The potential of using the hybrid polarity (HP) mode for sea ice surveillance in L- and C-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is investigated. The objective is to study the possibilities to reconstruct a pseudo-quad-polarimetric (QP) covariance matrix using existing and novel reconstruction methods. Our main goal is to study how close the HP mode, in terms of polarimetric information, is to the QP mode. Two new reconstruction methods are proposed and investigated. Although they exhibit similar performance to the known method developed by Souyris et al., they are less complex and do not require any user input. We discovered that the median and standard deviation of the relative error between the true and the estimated cross-polarization intensity are better for the L-band compared to the C-band SAR data. This discovery is based on four pairs of quasi-simultaneous QP SAR images of Arctic sea ice acquired by Radarsat-2 and ALOS-2.

Analysis of Evolving Oil Spills in Full-Polarimetric and Hybrid-Polarity SAR

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 is comparable with the full-polarimetric mode in its ability to distinguish the various slicks from open water (OW) for challenging conditions of high winds (9–12 m/s), small release volumes (0.2–0.5 m3), and during the period 0–9 h following release. The features that contain the cross-polarization component are better for distinguishing the various slicks from open water at later and more developed stages. Although these features are not available in the HP mode, we identify alternative features to achieve similar results. In addition, a clear correlation between the results of individual features and their dependence on particular components within the two-scale Bragg scattering theory is identified. The features that show poor detectability of the oil slicks are those that are independent of the small-scale roughness, while the features resulting in good separability were dependent on several factors in the two-scale Bragg scattering model. We conclude that the HP mode is a viable alternative for SAR-based oil spill detection and monitoring that provides comparable results to those from the quad-polarimetric SAR.

Assessment of RISAT-1 and Radarsat-2 for Sea Ice Observations from a Hybrid-Polarity Perspective

Utilizing several Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) missions will provide a data set with higher temporal resolution. It is of great importance to understand the difference between various available sensors and polarization modes and to consider how to homogenize the data sets for a following combined analysis. In this study, a uniform and consistent analysis across different SAR missions is carried out. Three pairs of overlapping hybrid- and full-polarimetric C-band SAR scenes from the Radar Imaging Satellite-1 (RISAT-1) and Radarsat-2 satellites are used. The overlapping Radarsat-2 and RISAT-1 scenes are taken close in time, with a relatively similar incidence angle covering sea ice in the Fram Strait and Northeast Greenland in September 2015. The main objective of this study is to identify the similarities and dissimilarities between a simulated and a real hybrid-polarity (HP) SAR system. The similarities and dissimilarities between the two sensors are evaluated using 13 HP features. The results indicate a similar separability between the sea ice types identified within the real HP system in RISAT-1 and the simulated HP system from Radarsat-2. The HP features that are sensitive to surface scattering and depolarization due to volume scattering showed great potential for separating various sea ice types. A subset of features (the second parameter in the Stokes vector, the ratio between the HP intensity coefficients, and the α s angle) were affected by the non-circularity property of the transmitted wave in the simulated HP system across all the scene pairs. Overall, the best features, showing high separability between various sea ice types and which are invariant to the non-circularity property of the transmitted wave, are the intensity coefficients from the right-hand circular transmit and the linear horizontal receive channel and the right-hand circular on both the transmit and the receive channel, and the first parameter in the Stokes vector.

Characterization and discrimination of evolving mineral and plant oil slicks based on L-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR)

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 oleate that served as a biogenic look-alike. The experiment occurred during the 2015 Norwegian oil-on-water exercise in the North Sea during a period of relatively high winds (~12 m/s). NASA’s Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) was used to repeatedly image the slicks over a period of eight hours, capturing the slicks’ early development and providing a time series from which to track the evolution of the slicks’ size, position, and radiometric characteristics. Particular emphasis is given in this analysis to identification of zones of higher damping ratio within the slicks (zoning) as potential indicators of thicker oil, and to comparison of the evolution of emulsion and plant oil damping ratios. It was found that all mineral oil slicks initially exhibited zoning apparent in VV, HH, and HV intensities, and that the areas of higher damping ratio persisted the longest for the highest oil content emulsion (80% oil by volume). In contrast, zoning was not unambiguously evident for plant oil at any time from 44 minutes to 8.5 hours after release.

Oil spill characterization in the hybrid polarity SAR domain using log-cumulants

Log-cumulants have proven to be an interesting tool for evaluating the statistical properties of potential oil spills in polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data within the common horizontal (H) and vertical (V) polarization basis. The use of first, second, and third order sample log-cumulants has shown potential for evaluating the texture and the statistical distributions, as well as discriminating oil from look-alikes. Log-cumulants are cumulants derived in the log-domain and can be applied to both single-polarization and multipolarization SAR data. This study is the first to investigate the differences between hybrid-polarity (HP) and full-polarimetric (FP) modes based on the sample log-cumulants of various oil slicks and open water from nine Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) scenes acquired off the coast of Norway in 2015. The sample log-cumulants calculated from the HP intensities show similar statistical behavior to the FP ones, resulting in a similar interpretation of the sample log-cumulants from HP and FP. Approximately eight hours after release the sample log-cumulants representing emulsion slicks have become more similar to the open water compared to plant oil. We find that the sample log-cumulants of the various oil slicks and open water varies between the scenes and also between the slicks and open water. This might be due to changes in ocean and wind condition, the initial slick properties, and/or the difference in the weathering process of the oil slicks.

Oil spill dispersion in full-polarimetric and hybrid-polarity SAR

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 hybrid-polarity (circular transmit/linear receive) synthetic aperture radar features. Specifically, we give a thorough discussion of observables derived from the cross-correlation of two polarization channels, and compare their counterparts in the two above mentioned polarization bases.

Assessment of the RISAT-1 FRS-2 mode for oil spill observation

Synthetic aperture radar data acquired by the Radar Imaging Satellite (RISAT-1) over experimental oil spills is here investigated. One quad-polarization scene in the Fine Resolution Alternate Polarization Stripmap (FRS-2) mode is analyzed to evaluate the potential of using this mode for oil spill observation. Oil slicks of varying type and age are clearly detected in the HH and VV channels, with relatively high signal-to-noise ratios. The cross-polarization channel is not found useful due to its proximity to the noise floor and some processing issues in the received product. Only intensity-based multipolarization parameters can be extracted due to the incoherent data acquisition. The Total Copolarization Power and the Polarization Difference are found to have good detection capabilities, whereas the Copolarization Power Ratio and the Normalized Polarization Difference only show small indications of the slicks. Comparison between SAR data and coincident observations from aircraft show a correlation between enhanced SAR signatures and locations of thicker oil layers.