Terrestrial Oil Spill Detection and Environmental Impact Monitoring using Multi-Source Earth Observation Data

过去几年，在加拿大艾伯塔省等地区，人们对陆上或陆上石油和废水泄漏的担忧大幅增加。例如，2012年春季，一条管道泄漏了950万升工业废水，这是北美近代史上最大的泄漏事件，发生在阿尔伯塔省北部扎马市东北约20公里处[1]。许多重要的生态系统，包括河流、湖泊、湿地和植被地区，都受到此类泄漏的威胁。随着管道的建立和通过铁路(加拿大铁路协会)等其他方式运输石油的增加，以及发生石油泄漏的可能性增加，迫切需要制定方法，以便及早发现泄漏、提取和划定受影响区域，并监测补救过程的有效性。遥感是一种快速且经济有效的技术，可用于溢油探测和环境影响监测。虽然地球观测(EO)数据的价值已经得到了很好的报道并在海上溢油事件中得到了实际应用，但它在陆基事件中的应用却少得多，部分原因是EO数据和陆地溢油测绘技术的应用受到了明显的限制。这项研究计划的目标是利用时间序列(事前和事后)多源EO数据，包括基于卫星的高分辨率光学、极化合成孔径雷达(SAR)和地面电磁测量测量，开发有效的方法来探测陆地石油/废水溢出并监测其对环境的影响。这项拟议的研究将建立在早期研究基于对象的图像分析的基础上，以使用多源EO数据。这项拟议的研究将使用加拿大航天局(CSA)通过科学和业务应用研究(SOAR)计划提供的合成孔径雷达数据，该数据是在艾伯塔省扎马市附近的一个已知泄漏地点获得的。这项工作将由一名拟招收的博士生完成。预期成果将是一个框架，其中包括用于陆地石油/废水溢出检测、划定受影响地区和利用环境观测数据监测受影响生态系统的图像处理技术。它还为今后利用基于卫星的地球观测技术监测石油和天然气相关活动的研究奠定了基础。

Concerns about terrestrial or land-based oil and waste water spills have increased considerably in the past several years in the areas such as Alberta, Canada. For example, in spring 2012, a pipeline leaked 9.5 million liters of industrial waste water, the North America's biggest spill in recent history, about 20 kilometres of Northeast of Zama City in Northern Alberta [1]. Many ecologically important ecosystems including rivers, lakes, wetlands and vegetation areas are threatened by such spills. With increasing establishment of pipelines and shipment of oil by other means such as rail (Railway Association of Canada) and higher possibility of oil spills, there is an immediate need to develop methods for early detection of spill, extraction and delineation of impacted areas, and monitoring the effectiveness of remediation process. Remote sensing is a rapid and cost effective technology that can be utilized for oil spill detection and environmental impact monitoring.While the value of earth observation (EO) data has been well reported and operationally applied in the case of maritime spills, it has been much less applied for land-based events partially because of the perceived limitations in the utility of EO data and techniques for terrestrial spill mapping. The objective of this research program is to develop effective methods for detecting terrestrial oil/waste water spill and monitoring its impact on the environment using time-series (before and after the event) multi-source EO data including satellite-based high resolution optical, polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and ground-based electromagnetic survey measurements. The proposed research will build on earlier works investigating object-based image analysis to use multi-source EO data. The proposed research will use SAR data provided by Canadian Space Agency (CSA) through the Science and Operational Application Research (SOAR) program acquired over a known spill site near Zama City in Alberta. This work will be performed by a PhD student to be recruited. The anticipated outcome will be a framework including image processing techniques for terrestrial oil/waste water spill detection, delineation of impacted area and monitoring of affected ecosystems using EO data. It, also, establishes a base for future research on oil and gas related activities monitoring using satellite-based EO techniques.**