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Journal ArticleDOI

Comparing Near-Coincident C- and X-Band SAR Acquisitions of Marine Oil Spills

TLDR
Multipolarization features show enhanced slick-sea contrasts and a better discrimination between mineral oil spills and other low-backscatter features in Radarsat-2 compared with TerraSAR-X, while investigation of logcumulants indicates a larger deviation from Gaussian statistics in the TerraSar-X data compared with Radar-2 measurements.
Abstract
In this paper, we compare satellite-borne Cand X-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data for marine oil spill observation. During large-scale oil-on-water exercises in the North Sea, quad-polarization Radarsat-2 (C-band) and dual-polarization TerraSAR-X (X-band) data were acquired with temporal distances of less than 24 min. The objective is to characterize and quantify differences in the Radarsat-2 and TerraSAR-X measurements. Three scene pairs are compared in terms of data quality and signal characteristics, including statistical properties and selected multipolarization (HH, VV) parameters. The signal characteristics are also compared among low-backscatter features of various origin within the individual pairs. No viable argument for selecting one sensor above the other is identified in the data quality study. In the statistical analysis, investigation of logcumulants indicates a larger deviation from Gaussian statistics in the TerraSAR-X data compared with Radarsat-2 measurements. Log-cumulant diagrams are also shown to be a useful tool for discrimination between oil spills and a simulated biogenic slick in both sensors. Multipolarization features show enhanced slick-sea contrasts and a better discrimination between mineral oil spills and other low-backscatter features in Radarsat-2 compared with TerraSAR-X. The presence of a non-Bragg scattering component in the data is revealed for both sensors. The relative contribution of non-Bragg scattering to the total backscatter is found to be higher in the TerraSAR-X data than in the Radarsat-2 data. In general, the non-Bragg component is found to account for a larger part of the backscatter in slick-covered areas compared with clean sea.

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Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI

Oil spill detection by imaging radars: Challenges and pitfalls

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors show that polarimetric parameters derived from fully-polarimetric SAR data, such as entropy, anisotropy, and mean scattering angle, are beneficial for discriminating between mineral oil films and biogenic slicks.
Journal ArticleDOI

SAR polarimetry for sea oil slick observation

TL;DR: Polarimetric SAR observations led to a significant improvement in sea oil slick observation since they allow distinguishing oil slicks from a broad class of lookalikes in an unsupervised way and deeper information on the damping properties of the pollutant can be inferred, which is of paramount importance for remediation purposes.
Journal ArticleDOI

Scheme of Parameter Estimation for Generalized Gamma Distribution and Its Application to Ship Detection in SAR Images

TL;DR: The experiments on single-look complex and multilook-processing L-band ALOS-PALSAR and C-band RADARSAT-2 SAR data verify the effectiveness of the proposed scheme of parameter estimation, and several examples of ship detection in real SAR images testify to the usefulness of the proposal in practical applications.
Journal ArticleDOI

Measurement and modeling of oil slick transport

TL;DR: In this article, a controlled release experiment was 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.
Journal ArticleDOI

A Multisensor Comparison of Experimental Oil Spills in Polarimetric SAR for High Wind Conditions

TL;DR: Although detection is possible, discrimination between slick types, using multipolarization parameters previously found useful for this purpose, is not possible under these conditions for the acquisitions in the instance studied.
References
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Book

Polarimetric Radar Imaging: From Basics to Applications

TL;DR: In this article, the authors used a two-dimensional time-frequency approach to evaluate the effect of speckle properties in SAR images and showed that the effect on the spatial correlation of the specckle sparseness of SAR images can be influenced by the number of multilook-processed SAR images.
Book

Understanding Synthetic Aperture Radar Images

TL;DR: In this paper, the principles of SAR image image formation are discussed and an analysis technique for multi-dimensional image analysis is presented based on RCS Reconstruction Filters and Texture Exploitation.
Journal ArticleDOI

Oil spill detection by satellite remote sensing

TL;DR: In this paper, the state-of-the-art for oil spill detection in the world oceans is presented. In particular, the use of manual and automatic approaches to discriminate between oil slicks and look-alikes based on pattern recognition.

Microwave Remote Sensing Active and Passive-Volume III: From Theory to Applications

TL;DR: In this article, volume scattering and emission theory are discussed, taking into account a weakly scattering medium, the Born approximation, first-order renormalization, the radiative transfer method, and the matrix-doubling method.
Journal ArticleDOI

Radar scattering and equilibrium ranges in wind‐generated waves with application to scatterometry

TL;DR: In this paper, a model for the response of surface waves in the gravity-capillary equilibrium region of the spectrum is proposed on the basis of a local (in wavenumber) balance between wind input and dissipation.
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