Remote Sensing of a Controlled Crude Oil Spill in an Artificially-Grown Sea Ice
Remote Sensing of a Controlled Crude Oil Spill in an Artificially-Grown Sea Ice
This project involves the growing of young sea ice in a specifically designed tank within a so-called oil curtain that limits the oil to a pre-defined space. 20 liters of light crude oil will be introduced from beneath the sea ice into the system when ice has grown to a certain thickness (about 6 cm). The radar signature of the system will be measured continuously through a C-band scatterometer to measure the changes due to the oil injection, and also as oil moves through the system. Furthermore, a ground penetrating radar (GRP) system at 500 MHz central frequency will be used (a) on the sea ice, and (b) over the sea ice (resembling an aerial GPR system). The data collected through the GPR will be utilized to reconstruct the profile of the oil-contaminated sea ice, and assess the ability of this technology in oil detection. Physical sampling of the oil-contaminated sea ice will allow us to know the true profile at various points of its evolution, better understand the geophysics of the system, and to verify the accuracy of any retrieval methodology for oil detection through the remotely measured data.
PI: D. Barber
Project Lead: N. Firoozy
Participants: David Barber, Nariman Firoozy, Gary Stern, Monika Pucko, Puyan Mojabi, Feiyue Wang; Thomas Neusitzer, Druell Desmond, Jake Ritchie, Marcos Lemes, Zhantang Xu, Kedong Zhang, Diana Chirkova, Dustin Isleifson (CEOS)