An Experimental Study on Oil Spill Characterization by Multi-Polarization SAR

During the Norwegian oil-on-water exercise in June 2011, a unique and comprehensive data set was acquired, containing multi-sensor data of oil slicks on the sea surface and corresponding ground truth information. The data set includes multi-polarization SAR data from Radarsat-2 and TerraSAR-X, acquired under calm to moderate sea and wind conditions. Two of the scenes each contain slicks from three different oil types, i.e. plant oil, crude oil and oil emulsion. Several polarimetric quantities are extracted from the multi-channel SAR data set, and many of the studied features show good detection performance. Some internal variations in the power of the features within the individual slicks and between the various types of oil are seen. These variations indicate that some of the features, alone or in combination with others, may allow discrimination between the different types of slicks, and hence confirm the added value of utilizing multi-polarization measurements in oil spill monitoring.