EVALUATION OF PETROLEUM HYDROCARBON OCCURRENCES IN ESTUARINE SEDIMENT USING REMOTE SENSING AND GEOCHEMICAL TECHNIQUES

Remote detection of petroleum hydrocarbons (PHs) using visible-near infrared (VNIR) and short-wave infrared (SWIR) spectroscopy has gained popularity over the last decade as a useful technique in monitoring sites of possible petroleum pollution. The introduction of PHs into the environment via runoff/spill of oil and oil distillates can cause enormous damage to the ecology and can pose significant threat to human health. Using spiked sediment samples (e.g., gasoline, diesel, crude oil, etc.) as a spectral input it is possible to carry out spectral similarity algorithms to extract spectral matches within an airborne hyperspectral dataset and thus delineate areas of possible PH pollution. The recent environmental catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico has been widely recorded via NASA’s Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS). Analysis of AVIRIS data collected in the Barataria Bay region of Louisiana on 9/14/2010 indicates absorption features consistent with those found in PH spiked sediment samples. However, environmental chemistry techniques are required in order to verify remote sensing methods. Therefore, a method was developed and implemented for the extraction and quantitation of PHs within polluted sediment. This data will be presented at the conference.