Detection of Oil Spilled Distribution in Southern California Seas
To conduct the Detection of Oil Spill Distribution in the Southern California Seas, Sentinel-1A satellite imagery data is utilized and processed using SNAP software. The data processing starts with subsetting according to the research area, radiometric calibration, ellipsoid correction, speckle filtering, and unsupervised classification.
The heavy traffic of ships and mining activities make the western America waters, especially in the California waters, vulnerable to marine pollution events due to oil spills. In October 2021 there was a leak of the Elly oil rig pipeline in the Huntington Coast to Newport Beach area which caused many birds and fish die. Similar cases have occurred several times in previous years in the California waters. Therefore, in this study a method was used to detect the spread of oil spills quickly in order to minimize the negative impact on the environment. The data used is Sentinel 1-A satellite imagery which is processed using SNAP software. Data processing begins with a subset according to the research area, radiometric calibration, ellipsoid correction, speckle filtering, and unsupervised classification. From the processing, it was found that the area of the oil spill in the Southern California waters was 2272,80 km2.
To compare the conditions before and after the spill, processing is conducted at two times: before and after the oil spill, providing the following visualizations:
Additionally, a comparison was made between wind speeds in August and October, indicating that in August, there was pollution in the waters, but it was not caused by oil spills, rather by look-alikes. Whereas, in October, it can be observed that most of the waters in California are black, caused by water pollution from oil spills in the area.
The calculation of the oil spill area is based on the dark spots identified in the processed imagery using SNAP software. After correction and k-means algorithm processing, the imagery is classified. The classification results in the following visualization:
Based on the image, it can be determined that the red color represents contaminated waters as a result of oil spills, the blue color represents uncontaminated waters, the orange color represents built-up environments, while the yellow color represents open land.