Model-based sea surface scattering analysis for the DWH oil spill accident case

This study proposed a novel method to analyze slick-free and oil covered sea surface backscattering in the special case of Deepwater Horizon (DWH) oil spill accident based on combination of tilted Bragg scattering and volume scattering components. The DWH accident represents a particular and challenging case due to the very large amount of leaked oil that came from the bottom of the ocean. The proposed scattering model consists of first estimate the large scale tilting angle of sea surface Bragg scattering mechanism and then of the retrieval, through its linear relationship with the relative dielectric constant, of oil-insea volume concentration. Finally, Bragg and volume scattering components can be estimated which provide useful information for a better understanding of i) the sea surface status and ii) the weak-damping properties the leaked oil due to purification/emulsification phenomena. The model is tested considering actual UAVSAR L-band fully-polarimetric SAR data.