[1] Marine ecosystems are greatly influenced by the structure and dynamics of fronts. In coastal upwelling systems, frontogenesis occurs frequently by upwelling and transport of cold water and warming in sheltered “upwelling shadow” retention sites. Monterey Bay, in the California Current upwelling system, hosts a dynamic upwelling shadow environment. Using a decade of satellite synthetic apert...

The Mediterranean Sea is a fragile ecological and economic area with with frequent oil pollution, both intentional and accidental. An EU financed project has undertaken the task to develop a demonstrator for a remote sensing system to detect and monitor oil spills and possibly other large-scale environmental emergency situations. The system will include automatic screening of SAR imagery for oi...

We investigate the potential of multi-polarization and multi-frequency SAR systems to discriminate oil-in-sea-ice mixtures from newly frozen and young sea ice. The dielectric properties of oil emulsions, for a range of oil volume fractions, and theoretical co-polarization ratios for relevant media are modeled and discussed. We also compare the co-polarization ratios computed from actual detecte...

Abstract Herders (also known as surface collecting agents) are made of active compounds (surfactants). They reduce the tension water and thereby change spreading behavior immiscible liquids, such an oil slick, floating on surface. Oil slicks that have spread too thin to burn can be re-thickened if herders sprayed around a slick. Once slick is thickened, it amenable in situ burning without need ...

Application of dispersants in shallow water remains an issue of debate within the spill response community. An experimental oil spill to evaluate potential environmental impacts and benefits of applying dispersants to spills in shallow water has therefore been under consideration. One site being considered was Matagorda Bay, on the Texas coast. Coupled three-dimensional oil spill and hydrodynam...

The slick hair coat (SLICK) is a dominantly inherited trait typically associated with tropically adapted cattle that are from Criollo descent through Spanish colonization of cattle into the New World. The trait is of interest relative to climate change, due to its association with improved thermo-tolerance and subsequent increased productivity. Previous studies localized the SLICK locus to a 4 ...

Oil spill patterns detected from Envisat ASAR images were integrated with hydrodynamic and oil spill trajectory models for the purposes of understanding the August 11, 2006 M/T Solar 1 oil spill, and to evaluate the accuracy of the oil spill patterns simulated by an oil trajectory model. The oil spill incident event that occurred a few kilometers southwest of Guimaras Island in Panay Gulf and I...

This paper introduces a method for modification of the formula of the fractal box counting dimension. The method is based on the utilization of the probability distribution formula in the fractal box count. The purpose of this method is to use it for the discrimination of oil spill areas from the surrounding features e.g., sea surface and look-alikes in RADARSAT-1 SAR data. The result shows tha...

Recent major oil-spills were tracked using observations with sufficient altitudes over the sea surface, to detect oil slick locations. For oil-spill responders, we propose a captive Unmanned Aerial System, UAS acting like a periscope over a ship or supply vessel. The system is composed of an umbilical deployed from ship deck, and there are few studies that have examined elasticity within cable ...

Oil spills can generate multiple effects in different time scales on the marine ecosystem. The numerical modeling of these processes is an important tool with low computational cost which provides a powerful appliance to environmental agencies regarding the risk management. In this way, the objective of this work is to evaluate the influence of a number of physical forcing acting over a hypothe...