WorldView-3 mapping of Tarmat deposits of the Ras Rakan Island, Northern Coast of Qatar: Environmental perspective

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2021.111988Get rights and content

Highlights

  • This study maps the tarmat deposits of Qatar using WorldView-3 data.

  • It reviews the spectral absorption characters of tar materials.

  • It discriminates tarmat deposits by digital image processing methods.

  • The results are verified in the field and confirmed by laboratory analyses.

  • It demonstrates the capability of WorldView-3 to map the deposits of arid region.

Abstract

This study characterizes the spectral behavior of tarmats and maps the tarmat deposits found along the coast of Ras Rakan Island off Qatar using WorldView-3 (WV-3) sensor data. The laboratory spectra of tar materials showed diagnostic absorptions features at 0.6 and 1.1 μm in the visible and near-infrared (VNIR) and 1.52, 1.73, 2.04, and 2.31 μm in the short wave infrared (SWIR) region. The panchromatic grayscale image and FCC showed the tarmat deposit as a linear warp feature between beach and water. The mapping of deposits using WV-3 data by decorrelation stretch and Linear Spectral Unmixing (LSU) methods discriminated the tarmats from the sandy soil, vegetation and sabkha features in a different tone. The capability of WV-3 sensor and the potential of image processing methods were verified by mapping the tar distribution of the Ras Ushayriq and NE of Al Ruwais.

Introduction

The Arabian/Persian Gulf (hereinafter termed as Gulf) is one of the most productive water bodies in the world owing to its clear and shallow waters with warm temperatures (Al Fartoosi 2013). The Iran-Iraq war during 1980–1988 and the Gulf war of 1991 produced several oil spills and created oil pollution (Poonian 2003), the effect of which is visible even today. Due to weathering and transport processes, nearly half of the spilled oil disperses within 24 h and then water-in-oil emulsion will be formed (Sengupta et al. 1993). The high salinity of the Gulf water causes stability of oil emulsion (Nesterova et al. 1983) and strong Shamal winds cause the suspended particles to adsorb on the surface of the emulsion. Tarballs and tarmats are basically oil residues originated from oil spills, and deposited on the inter-tidal zone in different forms and sizes through various weathering processes. The residues remain in the ocean environment indefinitely, decomposed or buried in the seafloor, which is a serious problem to the environment. The diverse microbes associated with tarballs and tarmats lead the biodegradation process, and reduces the concentration of hydrocarbons in the water (Fernandes et al. 2019).

Several studies have been conducted to identify the sources of tars (Arekhi et al. 2020; Suneel et al. 2019, 2016, 2013), its degradation, including microbial degradation and pollution due to tarballs (Shinde et al. 2020; Suneel et al. 2014; Kiruri et al. 2013; Debrot et al. 2013; Fingas and Fieldhouse 2009) and transportation and deposition (Veerasingam et al. 2020; Peters and Siuda 2014; Dalyander et al. 2014) in the marine environment. El-Samra et al. (1986) studied the severity of the problem posed by the presence of tarballs, tarmats and tar contamination on the beaches along the Qatar coast. Emara and El-Deeb (1988) studied the dissolved hydrocarbon present in the waters of the coastal sector extending from Qatar to UAE and showed the concentration level which ranged between 7.7 and 32 μg L−1. Aboul Dahab and Al-Madfa (1993) analyzed coastal sediments of the eastern and western beaches of Qatar for Total Petroleum Hydrocarbon (TPH) concentrations and estimated the concentrations as 48 μg g−1 and 248 μg g−1, respectively. Al-Lihaibi and Al-Omran (1996) studied the TPH levels of offshore Gulf sediments and found the levels ranging from 4.0 to 56.2 μg g−1, with an average of 12.3 μg g−1. Al-Lihaibi and Ghazi (1997) noted the presence of a higher concentration of petroleum hydrocarbons (average: 32.6 μg g−1) in the offshore sediments of the Gulf which is due to oil activities in the offshore. Al-Madfa et al. (1999) analyzed tar samples collected from 11 locations and showed that concentrations range from 2 to 1132 g m−1 (average: 290 g m−1). They stated that the tar deposit was maximum in the northwestern (average of 723 g m−1) and northern (average of 620 g m−1) coasts of Qatar, and this was due to the Gulf War. They opined that east coast receives fresh tar in lower amounts (average: 150 g m−1) compared to the west coast (average: 304 g m−1), where older tar from earlier spills are still persisting in larger quantities. Recently, Veerasingam et al. (2020) studied the spatial distribution, structural characterization and weathering of the tarmats found along the west coast of Qatar, and found that distribution of tarmat is 0–104 g m−1 with an average value of 9.25 g m−1. Arekhi et al. (2020) investigated the tarmats of Ras Rakan Island and northern beaches of Qatar and confirmed through hopane fingerprint that the residual oil was deposited by a relatively large and regional-scale old oil spill. Therefore, mapping of tarmat deposited along the coastal region of the State of Qatar is important to assess its impacts over the coastal resources and environment.

In this context, remote sensing techniques have been found to be potential to detect tarmats found in the areas, which are otherwise difficult to map physically. Availability of satellite images with high spatial and temporal resolutions would facilitate this task. Several studies demonstrated the usefulness of high-resolution satellite data in mapping hydrocarbon leaks (Correa Pabón and Souza Filho 2019; Asadzadeh and Souza Filho 2017), oil sands (Asadzadeh et al., 2019), vegetation (Wu et al. 2019), soil (Goldblatt et al. 2017), minerals (Sun et al. 2017), coastal bathymetry (Collin et al. 2017), agriculture (Hively et al. 2019), etc. However, until now, there is no research work on mapping the occurrence of tarmats found on any coast using satellite data. This study describes the spectral absorption characteristics of tar materials, and mapping the occurrence of tarmats deposited along the coast of Ras Rakan Island situated in the northern part of the State of Qatar using WorldView-3 (WV-3) data (Fig. 1).

Section snippets

Study area

The coordinates of the Ras Rakan Island are 26°11′1“ N and 51°12’56” E (Fig. 1). The island is nearly 3.2 km in length in the east-west with varying width (maximum of 0.4 km) and a total area of less than 1 km2. It is T shaped at its western end, and this stretch is 1.6 km long. The island has plants, shrubs, bushes and sabkha on its surface with sparse mangroves on the southern side. The island is a tract of land for economic, social and cultural interests in Qatar. It is made up of limestone

Spectral absorptions of tar materials

Spectroscopy of different oils, organic compounds and hydrocarbons have been studied by several researchers (Correa Pabón and Souza Filho 2019; Asadzadeh and Souza Filho 2017; Scafutto and Souza Filho 2016; Lammoglia and Souza Filho 2011; Coates 2006). Literature review shows that the fundamental absorptions of hydrocarbons include an aromatic Csingle bondH stretch, symmetric and asymmetric stretches and bends of CH3 and CH2 radicals, the carbonyl–carboxyl Csingle bondO stretch, aromatic carbon stretch, and numerous

Satellite data

We have used WV-3 data to map the tarmat distribution of Ras Rakan Island. WV-3 is a commercial satellite of DigitalGlobe launched on August 13, 2014 from Vandenberg Air Force Base on an Atlas V flying in the 401 configuration. It has 29 multispectral sensors that provide bands including one panchromatic (31 cm), eight in the visible and near-infrared (VNIR, 1.24 m) and eight in the shortwave infrared (SWIR, 3.7 m) regions (Table 2). The 12 CAVIS bands (30 m) are generally used for atmospheric

Visual interpretation of tarmats

The study of tarmats using panchromatic image of WV-3 (Fig. 4) shows the occurrence of tarmats clearly as a linear warp feature in black and fine texture between beach sand and the water. The dark appearance may be due to the strong absorption of light in the entire visible region. The beach sand exhibits as a linear feature with bright tone and fine texture, parallel to the tarmats deposits. The vegetation and sand of the island appear as light grey and white, and medium to coarse and fine

Tarmats in A- Ruwais and Ras Usharyiq

The spectra of absorption of tar materials, mapping of tarmats by FCC and decorrelation stretch methods and detection of tarmats by LSU method show that WV-3 data and image processing methods have the potential to study the occurrence and spatial distribution of tarmats. To validate the remote sensing data and methods, we chose two test sites, viz., Ras Ushayriq and NE of Al Ruwais, located in the northern part of the State of Qatar (Fig. 1). The results of the test sites are given in Fig. 11.

Conclusions

In this study, spectral absorption characteristics of tar materials is described in detail. The laboratory spectra of tar materials in the 0.42 to 2.5 μm wavelength region showed the spectral absorption near 0.6 and 1.1 μm in the VNIR region and 1.52, 1.75, 2.04 and 2.4 μm in the SWIR region. The spectra resampled to the spectral bands of WV-3 in the VNIR region showed the presence of significant absorption in bands 5 and 8 of WV-3. The study of panchromatic grayscale image and FCC showed the

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Sankaran Rajendran: Conceptualization, Methodology, Data Analysis and Interpretation, Writing Original draft preparation. Jassim A. Al-Khayat: Conceptualization, Investigation, Validation, Reviewing. S. Veerasingam: Data Analysis and Interpretation, Validation, Reviewing. Sobhi Nasir: Data Analysis and Interpretation, Reviewing and Editing. P. Vethamony: Conceptualization, Investigation, Validation, Reviewing and Editing. Fadhil N. Sadooni: Reviewing, Investigation. Hamad Al-Saad Al-Kuwari:

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgments

This study acknowledges the Office of Research Studies, Qatar University for awarding the Project (QUEX-ESC-QP-TM-18/19) funded by the Qatar Petroleum to ESC. The findings achieved herein are solely the responsibility of the authors. The authors thank DigitalGlobe, USA for providing the Worldview-3 satellite image (Image ID: 104001004D7C7D00) acquired on June 29, 2019. The measurement of spectra using the PIMA spectrometer was supported by the Sultan Qaboos University, Oman. The authors are

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