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

Abstract

In this paper, we present the experimental setup and data collection during the Norwegian Radar oil Spill Experiment 2015, followed by a comparison of a subset of the multisensory synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery collected during the experiment. Multipolarization SAR data acquired by Radarsat-2, TerraSAR-X, and the uninhabited aerial vehicle synthetic aperture radar (UAVSAR) less than 6 min apart are investigated and compared. All three sensors detect the four slicks of varying physiochemical composition under challenging conditions posed by small slicks in high wind conditions of ∼ 12 m/s. The detectability is best in TerraSAR-X and UAVSAR. The high wind allows for large signal-to-noise ratios over the slicks, even in the satellite data and in cross-polarization channels. 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.