A Review of Remote Sensing Applications in Detection of Sea Oil Pollution

One of the most important pollution factor in the marine environment is oil spill. Rapid identification and prevention of oil spills at sea as well as reduction of the destructive impacts on marine ecosystems are essential. The remote sensing technology is the best choice for the rapid detection and monitoring of oil slacks because of data acquisition in different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, short time intervals, and wide area viewing. The main objective of this research is introduction of capability of different parts of remote sensing in oil pollution detection. Hence, the advantages and disadvantages of various sensors are evaluated. Visible range sensors do not work at night and distinguish between oil and background. In the thermal infrared region, radiation of sea weed, ocean fronts, and coastlines are like the oil slack. Hence it causes the false alarms in detection process of oil slacks. In the microwave radiometer, biological organisms cause false alarms as well as these sensors are expensive. In contrast to the mentioned cases, the SAR data are widely used for monitoring oil spill in the sea and ocean due to their day and night and all-weather imaging capabilities and having large coverage. According to the results, SAR data with C-band of microwaves and VV polarization are suitable for oil spill detection. Also, in comparison of single polarized data, the fully polarimetric data give more useful information.