The Use of Satellite Imagery from Archives to Monitor Oil Spills in the Mediterranean Sea

Accidental pollution at sea can be reduced but never completely eliminated, on the other side, deliberate illegal discharges from ships can indeed be reduced by the strict enforcement of existing regulations and the control, monitoring and surveillance of maritime traffic. Notwithstanding, operational oil discharges is a common practice and represents the main source of marine pollution from ships. Consequently, JRC has focused its attention on the need to monitor in the long term the problem of sea-based oil pollution in all European seas. For this reason, JRC has collected aerial surveillance data and satellite imagery from different actors and archives, even if the data for the seas around Europe are not homogeneous. In this paper, JRC intends to present the first results of the analysis of the created database on oil spills for the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. In conclusion, the long term oil spill monitoring is the key instrument to assess the implementation of maritime transport regulation such as the Directives on port reception facilities and on ship-source pollution and can be seen as an environmental indicator of the European Seas.

FERRARO DI SILVI E CASTIGLIONE Guido;  BULGARELLI Barbara;  MEYER-ROUX Serge;  MUELLENHOFF Oliver;  TARCHI Dario;  TOPOUZELIS Konstantinos; 

2008-05-05

Springer Science + Business Media B.V.

JRC36662

978-1-4020-6771-6,   

http://www.springer.com/geosciences/book/978-1-4020-6771-6,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC36662,