| Abstrakt: |
The Persian Gulf is characterized by a huge number of offshore oil and gas platforms, large number of many oil terminals, and busy shipping lines for supporting oil transportation. In this regard, developing various methods for assessing the oil pollution of the Gulf, including remote sensing, is extremely important. For the first time, synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images of the European Sentinel-1A and Sentinel-1B satellites were used routinely to monitor the entire Gulf in 2017–2019. To effectively analyse the SAR images and their detected dark patches, a monitoring method based on manual detection and all contextual information available using web-GIS approach, was used. This involved the creation of a dedicated geoportal with oceanographic, physical – geographical, industrial and navigational information on the water basin, including the offshore oil and gas infrastructure. Using this approach, as well as data from automatic ship identification system, most oil spills were detected, recognized and mapped. The summary oil spill distribution maps and main statistical results of the monitoring are presented and discussed. It is shown that the main sources of oil pollution in the Persian Gulf (oil slicks/spills from 0.5 to about 700 km2) are (in decreasing order) oil production, oil transportation, and local shipping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
