Detecting weathered oil from the Deepwater Horizon incident in the wetlands of Barataria Bay, Louisiana, using a time series of AVIRIS imaging spectrometer data (Invited)
Abstract
From April to July 2010 oil flowed from the Macondo well into the Gulf of Mexico. The USA shoreline was contaminated along hundreds of kilometers of beach and coastal wetland ecosystems. As part of the emergency response to the incident, data from the Airborne Visible/InfraRed Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS) were collected on several data in 2010, 2011, and 2012. These collections were made over impacted coasts from high altitude and low altitude aircraft, acquiring data with 4.4 to 20 meter pixel size, dependent on flight altitude. Spectroscopic methods were applied to these data to delineate the most heavily impacted areas, characterize the physical and chemical impacts of the oil on the ecosystem, and evaluate short-term vegetation response. The challenges to detecting oil contamination in this heavily vegetated area will be discussed, including requirements for atmospheric correction, impacts of clouds, discrimination of oil from spectrally similar materials, and the observed limit of detection.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2013
- Bibcode:
- 2013AGUFMOS31E..06K
- Keywords:
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- 0480 BIOGEOSCIENCES Remote sensing;
- 0497 BIOGEOSCIENCES Wetlands;
- 0478 BIOGEOSCIENCES Pollution: urban;
- regional and global;
- 0439 BIOGEOSCIENCES Ecosystems;
- structure and dynamics