title: Oil source-fingerprinting in support of polarimetric radar mapping of Macondo-252 oil in Gulf Coast marshes.
abstract: Polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (PolSAR) data exhibited dramatic, spatially extensive changes from June 2009 to June 2010 in Barataria Bay, Louisiana. To determine whether these changes were associated with the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) oil spill, twenty-nine sediment samples were collected in 2011 from shoreline and nearshore-interior coastal marsh locations where oil was not observed visually or with optical sensors during the spill. Oil source-fingerprinting and polytopic vector analysis were used to link DWH oil to PolSAR changes. Our results prove that DWH oil extended beyond shorelines and confirm the association between presence of DWH oil and PolSAR change. These results show that the DWH oil spill probably affected much more of the southeastern Louisiana marshland than originally concluded from ground and aerial surveys and verify that PolSAR is a powerful tool for tracking oil intrusion into marshes with high probability even where contamination is not visible from above the canopy.
authors.affiliation: U.S. Geological Survey, National Wetlands Research Center, Lafayette, LA, United States. Electronic address: ramseye@usgs.gov.
authors.forename: Elijah
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Ramsey
authors.affiliation: Department of Environmental Sciences, Louisiana State University, LA, United States.
authors.forename: Buffy M
authors.initials: BM
authors.lastname: Meyer
authors.affiliation: U.S. Geological Survey, National Wetlands Research Center, Lafayette, LA, United States.
authors.forename: Amina
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Rangoonwala
authors.affiliation: Department of Environmental Sciences, Louisiana State University, LA, United States.
authors.forename: Edward
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Overton
authors.affiliation: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, CA, United States.
authors.forename: Cathleen E
authors.initials: CE
authors.lastname: Jones
authors.affiliation: University of Lafayette, LA, United States.
authors.forename: Terri
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Bannister
mesh_terms: D004784:Environmental Monitoring / Q000379:methods; D004787:Environmental Pollution / Q000032:analysis; D005843:Geography; D008145:Louisiana; D010578:Petroleum / Q000032:analysis*; D059392:Petroleum Pollution; D011825:Radar; D014874:Water Pollutants, Chemical / Q000032:analysis* / Q000737:chemistry; D053833:Wetlands
chemical_list: D010578:Petroleum; D014874:Water Pollutants, Chemical
keywords: Deepwater Horizon oil spill event; Diagnostic ratio analysis; Oil source-fingerprinting; Radar detection of oil occurrence; Wetland oil contamination