Analysis of the reflectance spectra of oil emulsion spilled on the sea surface

摘要

Airborne remote sensing appears useful for monitoring oil spill accident or detecting illegal oil discharges. In that context, hyperspectral imagery in the SWIR range shows a high potential to describe oil spills. Indeed reflectance spectra of an oil emulsion layer show a wide variety of shapes according to its thickness or emulsion rate. Although based on laboratory measurements, it seems that these two parameters are insufficient to completely describe them. It appears that the way emulsion is performed leads to different reflectance spectra. Hence this paper will present a model which tends to simulate reflectance spectra of an oil emulsion layer over the sea water. To derive an analytical expression, some approximations and assumptions will be done. The result of this model shows high similarities with laboratory measurements and seems able to simulate most of the shapes of reflectance spectra. It also shows that a key parameter to define the shape of the reflectance spectra is the statistical distribution of water bubbles size in the emulsion. The description of this distribution function, if measurable, should be integrated into the methodology of elaboration of spectral libraries in the future.