Oil Spill Monitoring in the Kola Bay of the Barents Sea in 2011-2012 using SAR Satellite Data.
Evtushenko, Natalia¹; Rybchak, Natalia^2
1RCD Scanex, RUSSIAN FEDERATION; ²Monitoring Center of Civil Defense Ministry of Russian Federation, RUSSIAN FEDERATION

Nowadays one of the relevant satellite monitoring issues is a control of oil and other spills in the sea. An effective system of satellite monitoring is becoming one of the key measures to prevent emergencies in the Arctic Region and its coastal areas. Satellite monitoring of the Kola Bay is based on synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images have started in June of 2011, under request and support from the Monitoring Center of Civil Defense of Russian Federation, Protection of the population from emergencies and fire safety Murmansk Region Office. The main data sources are SAR data from Radarsat-1, Radarsat-2 and former Envisat satellites. Analysis of SAR images is carried taking into account geoinformation approach based on the ScanEx' web-GIS application Geomixer (geomixer.ru), regional natural features, local industry infrastructure and ground-truth data and observations. In 2011 there were acquired 46 satellite scenes. According to the analysis of SAR images and subsatellite data integrated maps showing extent and areas of oil spills in the Bay were created. They clearly two main areas of oil pollution located nearby town of Severomorsk and the Kola Bay outlet. In 2012, the frequency of SAR imaging increased by almost two times resulting in increased number of detected oil slicks in the bay. In April 2012 the information about pollution distribution derived from SAR satellite data has been verified by subsatellite observations from the boat cruising in the Bay at the times close to the time of image acquisitions. Monitoring revealed that the main mainly oil pollutions in the Kola Bay originated from coastal industrial companies, port facilities and vessels calling at the Murmansk port. The main source of oil pollution as detected by monitoring is the shipbuilding plants belonging to the Ministry of Defence and Department of Transportation located within the water protection zone on the western and eastern coasts of the Kola Bay, which dumps industrial and household wastewaters into the Bay.