OIL POLLUTION OF THE GULF OF OMAN BASED ON MONITORING WITH SYNTHETIC APERTURE RADAR

Abstract

The results of satellite radar monitoring oil pollution in the Gulf of Oman carried out in the period from January 2017 to April 2020 are analyzed. Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images from the European satellites Sentinel-1A and Sentinel-1B and a geoinformation approach were used for this that makes it possible to fairly unambiguously determine oil spill causes and their sources. During the monitoring 2584 oil spill patches was detected on 730 SAR images whose total area is about 4972 km2. It is shown that the main oil spill source in the Gulf of Oman is intensive shipping by sea, including the tanker fleet, and the United Arab Emirates waters and the approaches to the Strait of Hormuz turned out to be the most polluted waters of the gulf.