CO2 storage in geological media: Role, means, status and barriers to deployment

Sedimentary basins are suitable to different degrees for CO2 geological sequestration as a result of various intrinsic and extrinsic characteristics, of which the geothermal regime is one of the most important. Warm basins are less favorable for CO2 sequestration than cold basins because of reduced capacity in terms of CO2 mass, and because of higher CO2 buoyancy, which drives the upward CO2 migration. A set of 15 criteria, with several classes each, has been developed for the assessment and ranking of sedimentary basins in terms of their suitability for CO2 sequestration. Using a parametric normalization procedure, a basin's individual scores are summed to a total score using weights that express the relative importance of different criteria. The total score is ranked to determine the most suitable basin or region thereof for the geological sequestration of CO2. The method is extremely flexible in that it allows changes in the functions that express the importance of various classes for any given criterion, and in the weights that express the relative importance of various criteria. Examples of application are given for Canada's case and for the Alberta basin in Canada.

Screening and ranking of sedimentary basins for sequestration of CO2 in geological media in response to climate change

Fast crisis response after natural disasters, such as earthquakes and tropical storms, is necessary to support, for instance, rescue, humanitarian, and reconstruction operations in the crisis area. Therefore, rapid damage mapping after a disaster is crucial, i.e., to detect the affected area, including grade and type of damage. Thereby, satellite remote sensing plays a key role due to its fast response, wide field of view, and low cost. With the increasing availability of remote sensing data, numerous methods have been developed for damage assessment. This article gives a comprehensive review of these techniques focusing on multi-temporal SAR procedures for rapid damage assessment: interferometric coherence and intensity correlation. The review is divided into six parts: First, methods based on coherence; second, the ones using intensity correlation; and third, techniques using both methodologies combined to increase the accuracy of the damage assessment are reviewed. Next, studies using additional data (e.g., GIS and optical imagery) to support the damage assessment and increase its accuracy are reported. Moreover, selected studies on post-event SAR damage assessment techniques and examples of other applications of the interferometric coherence are presented. Then, the preconditions for a successful worldwide application of multi-temporal SAR methods for damage assessment and the limitations of current SAR satellite missions are reported. Finally, an outlook to the Sentinel-1 SAR mission shows possible solutions of these limitations, enabling a worldwide applicability of the presented damage assessment methods.

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Rapid Damage Assessment by Means of Multi-Temporal SAR — A Comprehensive Review and Outlook to Sentinel-1

A Landsat-based humid tropical forest disturbance alert was implemented for Peru, the Republic of Congo and Kalimantan, Indonesia. Alerts were mapped on a weekly basis as new terrain-corrected Landsat 7 and 8 images were made available; results are presented for all of 2014 and through September 2015. The three study areas represent different stages of the forest land use transition, with all featuring a variety of disturbance dynamics including logging, smallholder agriculture, and agroindustrial development. Results for Peru were formally validated and alerts found to have very high user's accuracies and moderately high producer's accuracies, indicating an appropriately conservative product suitable for supporting land management and enforcement activities. Complete pan-tropical coverage will be implemented during 2016 in support of the Global Forest Watch initiative. To date, Global Forest Watch produces annual global forest loss area estimates using a comparatively richer set of Landsat inputs. The alert product is presented as an interim update of forest disturbance events between comprehensive annual updates. Results from this study are available for viewing and download at http://glad.geog.umd.edu/forest-alerts and www.globalforestwatch.org.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/3/034008/pdf

Humid tropical forest disturbance alerts using Landsat data

Oil spills on the sea surface are observed relatively often. Pollution due to either accidents or deliberate oily discharges from ships represents a serious threat to the marine environment. Operational oil spill monitoring is currently done using a combination of satellite monitoring and aircraft surveillance. The combined use of satellite-based synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images and aircraft surveillance flights is a cost-effective way to monitor oil spills in large ocean areas and catch the polluters. SAR images enable covering large areas, but aircraft observations are needed to prosecute the polluter, and in certain cases to verity the oil spill. Traditionally, oil spill detection is based on single polarization SAR images. Oil spills can be discriminated from look-alikes based on a set of features describing the contrast, shape, homogeneity, source, and surroundings of the slick. Good performance is reported for single-polarization oil spill detection, but in certain cases the oil slicks cannot be discriminated from biogenic films. In the recent years, a number of studies have shown that polarimetric SAR can improve the discrimination between oil slicks and biogenic films. Several features computed from dual-pol or quad-pol images have been proposed. These include both quad-pol features like polarimetric entropy and anisotropy, mean scattering angle, polarimetric span, conformity coefficient, as well as the dual-pol features standard deviation of the copolarized phase difference and the copolarized correlation coefficient. As dual-pol SAR imagery is now available on a regular basis from Cosmo Skymed and TerraSAR-X, and quad-pol data are available from RADARSAT-2, polarimetric SAR can now be utilized on a more regular basis. Optical data from sensors like Aqua MODIS and ENVISAT MERIS can be a useful supplement under certain cloud-free conditions.

Remote Sensing of Ocean Oil-Spill Pollution

The International Charter “Space and Major Disasters” initiative

Responding to catastrophic natural disasters requires critical information When lives and everyday activities are interrupted by crises such as earthquakes, landslides, volcanoes, hurricanes, and floods, timely satellite imagery and aerial photographs become invaluable tools in revealing post-disaster conditions and in aiding disaster response and recovery efforts An international group of satellite data providers manages a cooperative program to provide emergency response satellite data to communities affected by major natural and anthropogenic disasters The International Charter ‘Space and Major Disasters’ (“Charter”) draws on the capabilities and resources of fifteen space agencies and a number of cooperators to quickly provide imagery and supplemental information for relief efforts in response to major disasters Repeatedly, the Charter and its resources have provided valuable assets in assisting with global disaster recovery activities

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2F978-1-4939-2602-2_6.pdf

The International Charter ‘Space and Major Disasters’

The launch of Canada's RADARSAT-1 satellite on November 4, 1995, marked a significant advance in spaceborne microwave remote sensing and a major contribution toward creating a viable international market for remote sensing data. The satellite is equipped with a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and is the first radar-imaging satellite designed to meet the scientific and operational needs of remote sensing data users. In addition to a network of ground SAR data receiving stations, the satellite's onboard tape recorder allows global coverage. Compared to previous spaceborne radar imagers, RADARSAT-1 offers a wide choice of ground resolution, imaging swath width, and incident beam angle. Its ScanSAR beam with 500-km-wide imaging swath and 100-m resolution is well-suited for global- or regional-scale synoptic observations, and fine beam with 50-km-wide imaging swath and less than 10-m resolution is ideal for local, detailed studies.

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1029/98EO00008

Mapping the world with remote sensing

Three typical examples of activation of the International Charter ``space and major disasters''

RESUMEL'eau souterraine est une ressource peu abondante dans les regions arides et semi-arides. L'exploration dans les secteurs ou le socle est cristallin et peu profond se limite aux zones ou la roche a subi le phenomene de fracturation. Les fractures produisent des discontinuites (failles et diaclases) dans le substratum geologique pour permettre l'ecoulement et l'emmagasinement de la nappe phreatique. Les fractures se presentent sur les images aeriennes et satellites comme des lineaments, sous forme de caracteristiques topographiques lineaires, de reseaux hydrographiques et de patrons lineaires de vegetation. Aussi les lineaments sont-ils des guides importants aux fins d'exploration de la nappe phreatique. La presente etude porte sur un lineament marquant observe sur des images Landsat du centre nord du Maroc et relie a d'importants controles structuraux du mouvement de la nappe phreatique et de la topographie de surface.Le lineament est trace dans un pluton granitique et son voisinage de roches metamo...

A. Mahmood

Papers

The International Charter “Space and Major Disasters” initiative

The International Charter ‘Space and Major Disasters’

Mapping the world with remote sensing

Three typical examples of activation of the International Charter ``space and major disasters''

Lineaments as Groundwater Exploration Guides in Hard-Rock Terranes of ARID Regions