Oil Spill Detection in Glint-Contaminated Near-Infrared MODIS Imagery

Remote Sensing

Andrea Pisano¹  Francesco Bignami²  Rosalia Santoleri²  Deepak Mishra²  Eurico J. D’Sa²  Sachidananda Mishra² 

[1] CNR-ISAC UOS Roma, Via Fosso Del Cavaliere 100, 00133 Roma, Italy;

关键词: oil spill detection;    MODIS;    sun glint;    remote sensing techniques;   

DOI  :  10.3390/rs70101112

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

We present a methodology to detect oil spills using MODIS near-infrared sun glittered radiance imagery. The methodology was developed by using a set of seven MODIS images (training dataset) and validated using four other images (validation dataset). The method is based on the ratio image R = L'_GN/L_GN, where L'_GN is the MODIS-retrieved normalized sun glint radiance image and L_GN the same quantity, but obtained from the Cox and Munk isotropic (independent of wind direction) sun glint model. We show that in the R image, while clean water pixel values tend to one, oil spills stand out as anomalies. Moreover, we provide a criterion to distinguish between positive and negative oil-water contrast. A pixel in an R image is classified as a potential oil spill or water via a variable threshold R_s as a function of L'_GN, where the threshold values are obtained from the slicks of our training dataset. Two different fitting curves are provided for R_s, according to the contrast sign. The selection of the correct fitting curve is based on the contrast type, resulting from the criterion above. Results indicate that the thresholding is able to isolate the spills and that the spills of the validation dataset are successfully detected. Spurious look-alike features, such as clouds, and other non-spill features, e.g., large areas at the glint region border, are also detected as oil spills and must be eliminated. We believe that our methodology represents a novel and promising, though preliminary, approach towards automatic oil spill detection in optical satellite images.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2015 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.