On the Use of Dual-Polarized SAR Data for Oil Spill Observation

In this paper a novel approach for oil spill observation, based on partially polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data, is proposed. A model which relates the co-polarized phase difference (CPD) to the sea surface scattering mechanism with and without slicks is developed. Experiments accomplished over multi-look complex (MLC) C-Band SAR data, show that the CPD approach is useful both to observe oil spills and to distinguish between oil spills and biogenic slicks.