Proceedings Article | 8 September 2011
KEYWORDS: Polarization, Remote sensing, Water, Polarimetry, Sensors, Ocean optics, Near infrared, Light sources, Visible radiation, Pollution
As the incidence of oil spills increases, the detection and measurement of oil pollution in the marine environment are
receiving augmented attention. Remote sensing is an increasingly important tool for the effective direction of oil spill
countermeasures. The most available physical quantities in optical remote sensing domain are the intensity and spectral
information obtained by visible or infrared sensors. However, besides the intensity and wavelength, polarization is
another primary physical quantity associated with an optical field. While the spectral information tells us about materials,
polarization information tells us about surface feature, shape, shading and roughness, and has the potential to enhance
many applications in optical remote sensing. During the course of reflecting light-wave, water-surface spilled oil will
cause polarimetric characteristic which is related to the nature of itself. Thus, detection of the polarization information
for polluted water by spilled oil has become a new remote sensing monitoring method. In this paper, four kinds of oils,
they are gasoline, diesel oil, motorcycle oil and soybean oil, were regarded as the experimental samples for polluted
water, and the multi-angle spectral-polarimetric instrument was used to obtain the multi-angle near infrared spectralpolarimetric
characteristic data of different oil-spilled water specimens. Then, the change rule between polarimetric
characteristic with different affecting factors, such as viewing zenith angle, incidence zenith angle of the light source,
relative azimuth angle as well as waveband of the detector were discussed, so as to provide a scientific basis for the
research on polarization remote sensing for polluted water by spilled oil.
