Hybrid-polarimetry Synthetic Aperture Radar for Oil-Spill Detection

Abstract

The Hybrid-polarimetry (hybrid-pol) Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) sensors are capable of providing: a sufficient amount of information about the surface that helps to accurately identify the oil-spill, and the reduced satellite re-visit time that helps to efficiently monitor the oil-spill and identify minor spills before they can spread out and cause widespread damage. Based on the oil-spill descriptors derived directly from the hybrid-pol Stokes vector, we evaluated the performance of hybrid-polarimetry in separating oil-spills from clean-sea areas. For the analysis, ALOS-PALSAR L-band satellite dataset, acquired over the Gulf of Mexico, is implemented.