Marine Pollution Bulletin 184 (2022) 114132

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Marine Pollution Bulletin

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/marpolbul

Oil spills: Detection and concentration estimation in satellite imagery, a

machine learning approach
Rubicel Trujillo-Acatitla a, José Tuxpan-Vargas a, d, *, Cesaré Ovando-Vázquez b, c, d, **
a
División de Geociencias Aplicadas, Instituto Potosino de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica A.C., Camino a la Presa de San José No. 2055, Colonia Lomas 4ta
Sección, San Luis Potosí, San Luis Potosí C.P. 78216, Mexico
b
División de Biología Molecular, Instituto Potosino de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica A.C., Camino a la Presa de San José No. 2055, Colonia Lomas 4ta Sección,
San Luis Potosí, San Luis Potosí C.P. 78216, Mexico
c
Centro Nacional de Supercómputo (CNS), Instituto Potosino de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica A.C., Camino a la Presa de San José No. 2055, Colonia Lomas 4ta
Sección, San Luis Potosí, San Luis Potosí C.P. 78216, Mexico
d
Cátedras-CONACYT, Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología, CDMX 03940, Mexico

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: The method's development to detect oil-spills, and concentration monitoring of marine environments, are
Landsat essential in emergency response. To develop a classification model, this work was based on the spectral response
Machine learning of surfaces using reflectance data, and machine learning (ML) techniques, with the objective of detecting oil in
Spectral response
Landsat imagery. Additionally, different concentration oil data were used to obtain a concentration-estimation
Oil concentration
model. In the classification, K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN) obtained the best approximations in oil detection
Oil spill
using Blue (0.453–0.520 μm), NIR (0.790–0.891 μm), SWIR1 (1.557–1.717 μm), and SWIR2 (1.960–2.162 μm)
bands for 2010 spill images. In the concentration model, the mean absolute error (MAE) was 1.41 and 3.34, for
training and validation data. When testing the concentration-estimation model in images where oil was detected,
the concentration-estimation obtained was between 40 and 60 %. This demonstrates the potential use of ML
techniques and spectral response data to detect and estimate the concentration of oil-spills.

1. Introduction
The oil industry has experienced spills of great magnitude
throughout its history, causing damage and losses to environmental,
social, economic, and even political sectors. These spills occur at
different stages of the industry process chain (exploration, production,
refining, storage, and/or distribution), either in marine or terrestrial
environments (Burgherr, 2007; Daly et al., 2016; Ivshina et al., 2015; Li
et al., 2016; Yang et al., 2021).
The marine environment has the greatest impact, with an estimation
of two million tons of oil released annually due to ship strikes, oil well
blowouts, pipeline ruptures, and explosions at storage facilities; as a
result, there is a constant damage to the ecosystem, and economic losses
(Burgherr, 2007; Daly et al., 2016; Ivshina et al., 2015). Since the 1980s,
the use of remote sensing tools in the detection and monitoring of oil
spills began (Hooper, 1982), but it was not until one of the worst spills
(over 4.9 million barrels of crude oil) that has been documented to date
occurred in April 2010 in the Deepwater Horizon platform in the Gulf of
Mexico that its use increased exponentially (Garcia-Pineda et al., 2017).
During this event, human observations from the air were used to detect
and monitor oil trajectories (Garcia-Pineda et al., 2017, 2013; Leifer
et al., 2012), which ended up in high costs due to the extent of the slick
(~180,000 km2) and the duration of the spill (Clark et al., 2010; Leifer
et al., 2012; Topouzelis et al., 2015).
Therefore, better methods were sought for spill detection and
monitoring, retaking the use of remote sensing tools that are low-cost,
cover large areas and are more efficient, making them useful for an
emergence response. With which it has started a new era in the appli­
cation of remote sensing to oil spill detection, in which various agencies,
institutions, and governments began contributing their spatial assets

* Correspondence to: J. Tuxpan-Vargas, División de Geociencias Aplicadas, Instituto Potosino de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica A.C., Camino a la Presa de
San José No. 2055, Colonia Lomas 4ta Sección, San Luis Potosí, San Luis Potosí C.P. 78216, Mexico.
** Correspondence to: C. Ovando-Vázquez, División de Biología Molecular, Instituto Potosino de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica A.C., Camino a la Presa de
San José No. 2055, Colonia Lomas 4ta Sección, San Luis Potosí, San Luis Potosí C.P. 78216, Mexico.
E-mail addresses: jose.tuxpan@ipicyt.edu.mx (J. Tuxpan-Vargas), cesare.ovando@ipicyt.edu.mx (C. Ovando-Vázquez).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2022.114132
Received 18 April 2022; Received in revised form 8 September 2022; Accepted 9 September 2022
Available online 26 September 2022
0025-326X/© 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
R. Trujillo-Acatitla et al.
during these types of events (Bessis, 2003; Ivshina et al., 2015; Leifer
et al., 2012).
With the use of remote sensing, several studies have been conducted
on the detection of spills in the marine environment using SAR sensors
(Arslan, 2018; Cantorna et al., 2019; Konik and Bradtke, 2016; Svej­
kovsky et al., 2016; Temitope Yekeen and Balogun, 2020; Topouzelis
and Psyllos, 2012). However, these sensors can have problems in
detecting spills because the oil's roughness on the water surface re­
distributes the reflection of sunlight, resulting in slicks appearing darker
than the surrounding water and generating backscatter patterns similar
to algae and areas with no wind, resulting in false positives (Clark et al.,
2010; Fingas and Brown, 2018; Garcia-Pineda et al., 2013; Leifer et al.,
2012; Lu et al., 2019; Sun et al., 2015).
Because to these SAR detection problems, work has been done on the
spectral characterization of oil slicks and their detection with multi­
spectral sensors such as MODIS, MERIS, and Landsat (Al-Ruzouq et al.,
2020; Arslan, 2018; Balogun et al., 2020; Chowdhury et al., 2021; De
Kerf et al., 2020; Hu et al., 2018; Lu et al., 2020, 2019; Luciani and
Laneve, 2018; Mohammadi et al., 2021; Ozigis et al., 2019). However,
due to weathering processes, the oil in the water can emulsify and/or
change its concentration, altering its spectral response, making detec­
tion with passive sensors difficult (Bonn Agreement Accord de Bonn
(BAOAC), 2007; Ivshina et al., 2015). Therefore, field and laboratory
research have been performed to understand the degradation process,
emulsion formation, changes in oil concentration, and its detection by
passive satellites (Daling et al., 2014; Hu et al., 2018; Ivshina et al.,
2015; Lu et al., 2020, 2019; Sun et al., 2015; Svejkovsky et al., 2016). In
some of them, a relation between reflectance and oil concentration has
been demonstrated, also spectral differences in the emulsions, these
results enable the detection and monitoring over time (Clark et al., 2010;
Daling and StrØm, 1999; Garcia-Pineda et al., 2013; Lu et al., 2020,
2019).
These variations, in the spectral response of the oil, bring about a
need for a marine spill management to cover detection and monitoring.
The first step, for this, is to collect spectral characteristics and variations
of oil data, as well as optical imaging data, and then develop a reliable
computational technique based on these data (Ivshina et al., 2015; Leifer
et al., 2012; Mohammadiun et al., 2021; Svejkovsky et al., 2016). In this
sense, models based on computation and artificial intelligence (AI) have
gained popularity in the treatment and management of large amounts of
data because they are capable of discriminating features, thus increasing
the accuracy of description, prediction, classification and segmentation
tasks in various fields of knowledge (James et al., 2013; Lary et al., 2018;
Mitchell, 1997; Simon, 1996; Singha et al., 2013).
In the Earth observation field, machine learning (ML) and AI tech­
niques have been applied to aspects such as water, soil, and vegetation
monitoring (Bar et al., 2020; Cao et al., 2020; Ghorbanian et al., 2020;
Lin et al., 2021; Singh et al., 2021; Zhou et al., 2021). Some models have
already been developed to detect oil spills for passive sensors (Al-
Ruzouq et al., 2020; Cococcioni et al., 2012; De Kerf et al., 2020; Kubat
et al., 1998; Liu et al., 2016; Mohammadi et al., 2021; Ozigis et al.,
2019). However, only a few have tried to develop techniques to
discriminate emulsion, thickness and/or concentration in satellite im­
agery (Clark et al., 2010; Lu et al., 2020, 2019; Svejkovsky et al., 2016).
Therefore, the search continues for a remote sensing method that
integrates the optical properties of surfaces with computational tools,
that can map the location and extent of oil slicks, and that is also capable
of determining their concentration to analyze their degradation over
time (Burgherr, 2007; Chen et al., 2019; De Padova et al., 2017; Fingas
and Brown, 2018).
For this reason, in this study, we seek the possibility of using spectral
response data of oil and other materials to train and validate different
ML classification methods. This to find the most reliable method in the
detection and segmentation of oil, in addition to finding the bands that
have a greater contribution in the discrimination of oil from other ma­
terials present in the optical images. Additionally, we seek to estimate
2
Marine Pollution Bulletin 184 (2022) 114132
the oil concentration of marine spills using oil reflectance data with
different concentrations, and thus monitor the degradation of the oil
from the point of origin of the spill, as well as the evolution of the slick
over time. Therefore, we developed this methodology to increase the
existing knowledge in this field of expertise and to be useful in assisting
emergency response plans in future spills.
2. Data and methods
The general scheme of the method is described in Fig. 1, showing the
main stages of the work: a) optical imaging acquisition and pre­
processing, b) processing to detect oil and its concentration via ML
paradigms using spectral data and, c) model outputs.
2.1. Data
2.1.1. Spectral data for surface detection
A total of 175 spectral response data were obtained from five ma­
terials/surfaces and used for training and validation of the ML models.
These materials were plastic, water, soil, vegetation, and oil, each with
35 observations. Data were obtained from Spectral library Version 7
(Kokaly et al., 2017), ECOSTRESS Spectral library version 1.0 (Meerdink
et al., 2019), Aster spectral library version 2.0 (Baldridge et al., 2009),
and the Spectral Signature Library generated and provided by the Na­
tional Commission on Space Activities (CONAE (Comision Nacional de
Actividades Espaciales), n.d.).
The data in the libraries are based on information obtained through
laboratory techniques, field spectroscopy and satellite data, with the
objective of mapping minerals, soil, liquids, organic compounds, man-
made compounds, and vegetation. The spectral range of measure­
ments covers the ultraviolet, near infrared and short-wave infrared
(from 200 to 2500 nm).
The spectral response data from the libraries showed continuous
variations in different spectral ranges, so a resampling was performed
considering the spectral ranges of six bands, covering the visible (Blue:
0.453–0.520, Green: 0.528–0.892, Red: 0.635–0.682 μm) and infrared
ranges (NIR: 0.790–0.891, SWIR1: 1.557–1.717, SWIR2: 1.960–2.162
μm), from Landsat 4–5 TM, Landsat 7 ETM+ and Landsat 8 OLI
satellites.
The resampled spectral data were stored in a database where each
column is the lexicographic representation of each band (X features) and
the rows corresponded to the observations of the selected materials with
their respective label (Y). These data were used in the machine learning
classification models.
2.1.2. Spectral data for concentration estimation
Oil spectral response data, obtained as described in Section 2.1.1,
were used to estimate the concentration. Forty oil data were used, which
were found at different concentrations and thicknesses as described in
the USGS Spectral Library Version 7 (Kokaly et al., 2017). For this paper,
the oil concentrations used were of 1, 23, 40, 60, 75, and 92 %, with
water accounting for the remaining percentage.
2.1.3. Satellite data
The satellite images used were mainly Landsat 5TM since its tem­
poral coverage has allowed us to have images of the spill that occurred in
the Deepwater Horizon platform in 2010. Landsat 8 OLI images of oil-
free areas were also used to corroborate the functionality of the ML
model. These images are freely available for download on the USGS
Earth Explorer platform, dates, and image identification details are
given in supplementary material Table S1.
The images obtained were preprocessed as described by Chander
et al. (2009) to obtain the TOA reflectance values (unitless). To mask
clouds and minimize the errors caused in ML models, cloud detection
was applied using the CloudMasking implementation of QGIS 3.10.6-A
Corunna (QGIS Development Team, 2018), based on Zhu et al. (2015),
R. Trujillo-Acatitla et al. Marine Pollution Bulletin 184 (2022) 114132

Fig. 1. General workflow of the method. In step 1, the images were obtained from the USGS Earth Explorer platform, then corrected to TOA, stacked, cloud masked
and restructured. In step 2, the restructured image was input into the classification model, previously trained and validated with public spectral response data, the
model output was restructured again to obtain the classified image, and if, and only if oil in the image it was passed to the concentration estimation model, step 3,
which was previously trained and validated, finally the output of this model was restructured and thus obtaining the final result image with the presence of oil and
the concentration estimation.

Zhu and Woodcock (2012).
The calibrated bands were stacked, generating a stack of m pixels × n
pixels × 6 bands (i.e. m × n × 6; e.g., 3 pixels × 3 pixels × 6 bands). This
band stacking was restructured to obtain a lexicographic representation
of band stacking, in an array of dimension m′ rows × 6 columns (e.g., 9
rows × 6 columns), where each column corresponds to a band or feature,
and each row is the pixel value, i.e., each row corresponds to the spectral
response of the material or surface within that pixel (Fig. S1). This
database was used as the unknown data input for the ML models.
The images were manipulated as numpy arrays to facilitate their
handling; therefore, NumPy 1.20.2 (Harris et al., 2020), Pandas 1.2.3
(McKinney, 2010), and Matplotlib 3.4.1 (Hunter, 2007) libraries were
used, and since they were images with geospatial aspects, the GDAL
3.1.4 (GDAL/OGR contributors, 2021) library was also used, all in the
Anaconda 4.10.0 environment (Distribution, 2020), and Python 3.7.10
(Van Rossum and Drake, 2009).
2.2. Exploratory and statistical analysis
To analyze the clustering of the classes using unsupervised methods,
principal component analysis (PCA) (Pearson, 1901) and t-Distributed
Stochastic Neighbor Embedding analysis (T-SNE) (van der Maaten and
Hinton, 2012) were performed to determine the behavior of the data
using linear and nonlinear transformations, these analyses were carried
out using stats package version 4.0.4 (R Core Team, 2021) and Rtsne
package version 0.15 (Krijthe, 2015). To assess the separation distance
between clusters, silhouette analysis was performed using the cluster
package version 2.1.0 (Maechler et al., 2015). Silhouette coefficients
close to 1.0 indicate that the sample is far from neighboring clusters. A
value of 0.0 indicates that the sample is at or close to the decision
boundary between two neighboring clusters, and negative values indi­
cate that those samples have been assigned to the wrong cluster
(Pedregosa et al., 2011; Rousseeuw, 1987).
For the concentration data, a linear regression model was performed
(Everitt, 1992) to observe the relationship between the concentration
and the spectral response of the oil. This analysis was performed in
general, and for each band. This analysis was performed using stats
package version 4.0.4 (R Core Team, 2021).

Some exploratory analyses and statistical tests were performed to

2.3. Machine learning models
observe differences and similarities in the spectral response between
surfaces. To determine the difference in the means between the mate­
Machine learning models are trained looking for a relationship be­
rials studied, an analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed (Fisher,
tween input and output, for our classification problem, the inputs were
1992) using stats package version 4.0.4 (R Core Team, 2021). Then, if
the reflectance data, and the outputs were each class to which the
the result was statistically significant, a Tukey post hoc analysis was
spectral response belongs. This type of model fits a model directly to the
performed to determine which groups were different (Tukey, 1977).
data, where each model is adjusted to minimize the prediction error and
This was performed using the agricolae package version 1.3.3 (de
decrease the overfitting (Verrelst et al., 2012).
Mendiburu, 2020). Additionally, a correlation analysis was performed
Compared to parametric or statistical models that define an input-
using Pearson's method to determine the relationship between materials
output function, and depend on a fixed set of parameters, in machine
(Freedman et al., 2007). This correlation analysis was performed using
learning it is a nonparametric, nonlinear, and flexible (Verrelst et al.,
the stats package version 4.0.4 (R Core Team, 2021). The results of the
2012; Wolanin et al., 2019). So, the search for a relationship between
correlations were plotted on a heatmap, and the dendrogram was drawn
input and biophysical parameters is possible (Verrelst et al., 2012).
to the rows and columns using the heatmap.2 function of the gplots
version 3.1.1 library (Warnes et al., 2020).

3
R. Trujillo-Acatitla et al.
2.3.1. Surface detection with six features
The first part of the processing focused on the detection of five sur­
faces (oil, plastic, vegetation, soil, and water). Therefore, a supervised
classification approach was applied and since there were more than two
classes, a multi-class approach was used, where each sample can only
have a single label (Pedregosa et al., 2011). For this task, the one vs. the
rest classification strategy was used, which tried fitting one classifier per
class, and for each classifier, the class was matched to all other classes. It
is a widely used approach for multi-class classification tasks, besides
having advantages for its computational efficiency (Pedregosa et al.,
2011).
In this study, the supervised learning algorithms Support Vector
Machine with linear (SVM-linear) and radial (SVM RBF) kernel, K-
Nearest Neighbors (KNN), Decision Tree (DT) and Random Forest (RF)
were tested using the Scikit-learn 0.24.1 library (Pedregosa et al., 2011).
2.3.2. Surface detection with important features
The second part of the processing consisted on the selection of the
most relevant variables, which are calculated with the accumulation of
the decrease of impurities (Gini importance) in each tree of the Random
Forest model (Pedregosa et al., 2011). After choosing the most important
variables, the supervised learning and One vs Rest approaches were
used, and the same models as in Section 2.3.1 were tested using the
Scikit-learn 0.24.1 library (Pedregosa et al., 2011).
2.3.3. Concentration estimation
For the third part of this work, and after detecting oil in the image,
concentration estimation was performed from the data mentioned in
Section 2.1.2. Since this task was a continuous outcome, it was treated as
a regression problem, to which a regression model was fitted with the
Random Forest approach using the Scikit-learn library 0.24.1 (Pedre­
gosa et al., 2011). Note that this second part works if, and only if the
presence of oil is detected, so its result is in the same area of the detected
oil slick.
2.3.4. Training and hyperparameter search
The data sets were divided into the training set, and the validation
set, with 67 % and 33 %, respectively. Since there is no way to know the
best values for the hyperparameters, a search of all possible combina­
tions of predefined parameter values was performed, selecting those that
maximize the score (Pedregosa et al., 2011). This search was conducted
for the classification and concentration models using the grid search
method (GridSearchCV) using the model_selection package of the Scikit-
learn 0.24.1 library (Pedregosa et al., 2011).
2.3.5. Accuracy assessment
Accuracy assessment, in ML models related to classification, is a
fundamental part of evaluating the performance of the algorithms (Bar
et al., 2020). In this study, the training and validation sets were used to
evaluate the accuracy of each proposed model. To evaluate the classi­
fication models, the accuracy score, balanced accuracy score, Cohen's
Kappa, Precision-Recall and F1 score were calculated. Using these
metrics, models with higher scores are better than those with lower
scores. The calculation of all metrics used was performed with the metric
package of the Scikit-learn 0.24.1 library (Pedregosa et al., 2011).
For the linear regression model, and the ML model for concentration
estimation, Mean Absolute Error (MAE), Mean Squared Error (MSE),
Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE), R2 and Max Error metrics were used
to evaluate the performance of the model, these metrics were calculated
for the whole data set. For the ML model, we also calculate these metrics
for the training and validation sets. Furthermore, to test the ML model
for concentration estimation, a synthetic image (matrix) was created
with six bands matching the Landsat wavelength ranges. The data were
sorted from the highest to the lowest concentration so that the con­
centration gradient was evident.
4
Marine Pollution Bulletin 184 (2022) 114132
2.4. Post-processing
The result obtained for the classification task was a vector, where
each observation was assigned the label of the class with the highest
probability of class membership according to the spectral response
values contained in the image. Afterward, and only if there was the
presence of the oil class in the image, a result was obtained for the
regression task, where each observation contained the estimated con­
centration value.
Once the result vectors were obtained, inverse restructuring was
performed to generate a square matrix, and thus has a classified image
where each of the five surfaces with which the model was trained is
located. The same was done for the result of the regression model,
obtaining the distribution and the estimated concentration gradient in
the oil slick, but only if the presence of oil was detected.
3. Results
3.1. Statistical approach
3.1.1. Spectral differences
The general spectral response distributions of the five materials
analyzed are shown in Fig. 2A. It is observed that water has the lowest
reflectance values compared to plastic, which has a wide variation, with
values close to 0 and 1. Materials with a similar dispersion are oil,
vegetation, and soil. However, the ANOVA analysis showed statistical
differences (p-value = 9.15e-140) among all materials. Also, in accor­
dance with the Tukey post hoc analysis, the similar materials are oil and
soil (p-value = 6.05e-2), and soil and vegetation (p-value = 8.58e-01),
the rest of the materials being different from each other.
The spectral response boxplots for each material broken down by
band (Fig. 2B) showed that the material with the highest dispersion in all
bands is plastic (0.0046 to 0.8884). The water had the lowest values
(0.0009 to 0.1443), which is more evident in the infrared (NIR, SWIR1,
and SWIR2). A closer look at the blue, green, and red bands showed that
the materials have similar dispersion, compared to the infrared bands,
where a separation of the materials begins to be noticed. In the NIR
band, differences between soil, vegetation, and water were observed. In
the case of vegetation, plastic, and oil show similar dispersion. The most
marked difference between oil, plastic, and vegetation was observed in
the SWIR bands. In this SWIR1 and SWIR2 bands, soil and water also
showed this behavior.
3.1.2. Correlations and clustering
The correlation of each datum was analyzed by Pearson's method and
plotted on a heatmap (Fig. 3). We noted 6747 observations with positive
correlation (r > 0), 8450 with a negative correlation (r < 0), and 28
uncorrelated data (r = 0). Most of the positively correlated data
belonged to the same material, such as the case water data that present
high values of positive correlation (r > 0.96) and are grouped together.
Similar behavior is observed in some soil and vegetation data (r > 0.74,
and r > 0.70, respectively), thus forming groups of data correlated with
data of the same category.
There are samples correlated with samples from other classes, such
as plastic, oil, vegetation, and soil, which show positive correlations
with water data (r > 0.70). Oil, plastic, soil, and vegetation data are
correlated with each other (r > 0.70). Some samples from oil and plastic
classes showed positive correlations with other materials (r > 0.75),
Fig. 3, although there are cases in which they are grouped within the
same class. In the case of negative correlations, it can be observed that
vegetation and water data are the ones that present correlation values
closer to -1.0. Also, this is observed in some oil data with water (r <
0.80), plastic (r < 0.70), and soil data (r < 0.71). In the same way in
plastic data with vegetation (r < 0.78) and soil data (r < 0.72).
In the correlation analysis for the bands (Fig. 4), it was observed that
the SWIR bands formed a group (r = 0.90) and the visible bands formed
R. Trujillo-Acatitla et al. Marine Pollution Bulletin 184 (2022) 114132

Fig. 2. A) Reflectance distributions of the five materials studied. Statistical differences were obtained in the ANOVA analysis (p-value = 9.15e-140). According to the
Tukey post hoc analysis, similar materials were oil and soil (p-value = 6.05e-2), and soil and vegetation (p-value = 8.58e-01). B) The spectral response distributions of
each material in each band. Black represents the oil, yellow is plastic, brown is soil, green is vegetation, and blue is water. (For interpretation of the references to
color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

another group (r > 0.88), the correlation coefficient values between
these groups presented low values (r < 0.68), the NIR band obtained low
values in correlation with both the visible (r < 0.75) and SWIR bands (r
< 0.77).
PCA, and T-SNE plots were obtained to further analyze the clustering
of the data from the five classes (Fig. 5). For the PCA (Fig. 5A), using two
components, 90 % variability, it can be observed that there is no clear
separation, as most of the data are found together despite belonging to
other classes. The water data are the ones that remain grouped together
with little overlap with the others. The plastic data showed great vari­
ability and dispersion in the PCA space, being found together with data
from other classes. The oil and vegetation data showed the same di­
rection in the PCA space, and the soil data are found with plastic,
vegetation, and oil data.
For the T-SNE analysis (Fig. 5B), the data showed greater clustering
and separability (average silhouette score = 0.38) compared to PCA
(average silhouette score = 0.16), however, some oil data were near the
water and vegetation data. The plastic data were observed in a single
group with a few exceptions close to water, vegetation, soil, and oil data.
The water data were the ones with the largest grouping and there were
no data of this class close to others. Soil and vegetation data were closest
to each other. In the two analyses, for this approach, we observed a poor

5
R. Trujillo-Acatitla et al. Marine Pollution Bulletin 184 (2022) 114132

Fig. 3. Correlation between all observations (175) of materials, 35 for each one. The color gradient corresponding to the correlation values of the data is observed.
Data with positive correlations (1.0) are shown with red colors, data with negative correlations (− 1.0) are shown in blue colors, and uncorrelated data (~0) are
shown in yellow colors. Classes for each sample are shown on column and row sides, black corresponds to oil class, yellow to plastic, brown to soil, green to
vegetation, and blue to water. The tree diagram present in the rows and columns corresponds to a dendrogram resulting from a hierarchical clustering representing
similarities or differences of each datum. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

Fig. 4. The correlation matrix between bands. The color gradient corresponding to the correlation values of the data is observed. Data with values of correlation
>0.85 show dark blue colors, data with values between 0.75 and 0.80 show light blue colors, and data with values <0.70 show colors almost white. The bands used
are shown in the columns and rows, the gray colors correspond to the infrared bands, the red, green, and blue colors represent the RGB bands. The tree diagram
present on the rows and columns corresponds to a dendrogram resulting from a hierarchical clustering representing similarities or differences of each datum. (For
interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

separation of the data because some observations were assigned in other
clusters. However, the nonlinear method, T-SNE, showed better results
than the linear method PCA. Therefore, models with nonlinear ap­
proximations generate better results in the differentiation of materials.
3.1.3. Linear models of concentration data
A general linear model, constructed with the average reflectance of
the six bands used, was used to estimate the oil concentration in the
satellite images (Fig. 6A). The model showed a negative trend (slope =
− 270), where the concentration decreases as reflectance increases, i.e.,
data with higher concentrations have lower reflectance values, and

6
R. Trujillo-Acatitla et al. Marine Pollution Bulletin 184 (2022) 114132

Fig. 5. PCA and T-SNE analyses of the data analyzed for the five classes worked. A) PCA, only two components were used since together they contain 90 % of the
variability of the data. B) T-SNE, only two dimensions were used. In both graphics, the black dots and ellipses represent oil, yellow is plastic, brown is soil, green is
vegetation, and blue is water. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

Fig. 6. The linear models for oil concentration data. The X-axis is the reflectance and the Y-axis is the concentration. A) General model, constructed with the average
reflectance of the six bands used, the slope for this model was statistically significant (p-value = 3.23e-11), with fit value R2 = 0.67, and negative trend (− 270). B)
The linear concentration model for each band used. A negative trend is observed for all bands, which is significant except for the SWIR2 band (p-value = 0.54). The R2
fit values, as well as the p-value and line equation, are shown in the graphs for each band.

those with lower concentrations have higher reflectance. 3.2. ML models

The negative trend in the general linear model (Fig. 6A) is still pre­
sent in the linear models of concentration and reflectance for each band
studied (Fig. 6B). For the SWIR2 band the linear model was not signif­
icant (slope = − 85.6, p-value = 0.54), but for the other bands it was
(blue band p-value = 4.5e-16, green band p-value = 2.6e-14, red band p-
value = 5e-13, NIR band p-value = 2.9e-10, SWIR1 band p-value =
0.004). The slope and R2 values were higher for the blue band (slope =
486, R2 = 0.81), followed by green (slope = 301, R2 = 0.77), then red
(slope = 189, R2 = 0.73), NIR (slope = 121, R2 = 0.63), and SWIR1
(slope = 128, R2 = 0.19).
According to the linear models, a negative linear relationship is
observed, which means that pure oil, or oil of higher concentration, has
the lowest reflectance values. However, a linear model does not fully
express this behavior since it only explains 67 % of the variation in the
data. Therefore, a linear model with statistical insights is not applied to
the concentration prediction.
The results of the ML models are presented in the following sections,
the first result is about the surface detection models using the six bands
in the Landsat imagery, the second result is the detection of surfaces
with models generated with the important variables according to the
Gini impurity method. Finally, the third result is about the oil concen­
tration estimation. For each result, we present the optimal values of the
hyperparameters used, the accuracy-scores obtained, and the tests per­
formed with the selected models.
3.2.1. Surface detection models with six features
3.2.1.1. Accuracy scores. In the grid search of the hyperparameters used
for optimization of the models (Section 2.3.4), the values that maximize
each model were obtained; the optimal values according to the scores
are shown in Table S2. To evaluate the accuracy of the ML models, six
metrics, Accuracy, Balanced Accuracy, Kappa, Precision, Recall, and F1

7
R. Trujillo-Acatitla et al.
scores, were used (Fig. 7).
Random Forest was the model with the highest performance in
predicting the different classes, with the highest values in all metrics for
both the training set (0.97, 0.97, 0.96, 0.97, 0.97, and 0.97) and vali­
dation (0.90, 0.90, 0.87, 0.90, 0.90, and 0.90) followed by SVM RBF
(0.93, 0.93, 0.91, 0.93, 0.93, and 0.93 for training set, and 0.88, 0.89,
0.85, 0.88, 0.88, and 0.88 for validation set), and KNN (0.91, 0.92, 0.89,
0.91, 0.91, and 0.91 for training set, and 0.88, 0.89, 0.87, 0.88, 0.88,
and 0.88 for validation set). The model with the lowest values was SVM
(0.83, 0.85, 0.78, 0.83, 0.83, and 0.83) for the training set and (0.85,
0.86, 0.81, 0.85, 0.85, and 0.85) for validation. Decision Tree, despite
having high values in the training set (0.96, 0.96, 0.95, 0.96, 0.96, and
0.96) it obtained lower values in the validation data set (0.85, 0.86,
0.81, 0.85, 0.85, and 0.85). In this sense, the latter model shows a large
difference in the results obtained in the metrics between the training and
validation sets, compared with the KNN model, where the differences in
the metrics between both sets are closer to 0.
3.2.1.2. Surface detection. Random Forest, SVM RBF, KNN, and Deci­
sion Tree models were tested with the May 9, 2010, spill image from the
DeepWater Horizon platform in the Gulf of Mexico (Fig. 8). The SVM
model was omitted because it was the model with the lowest values in
the metrics (Section 3.2.1.1). In the RGB image (Fig. 8), oil was present
and is seen in positive contrast with seawater without oil, i.e., the areas
where oil is present showed a gray coloration compared to water
without oil. Soil and vegetation were also known to be present in the
Mississippi Delta area, and evidently water in most of the scene, plastic
was the only material not known to be present in the scenes.
The classification result for the Random Forest model (Fig. 8)
assigned the plastic (yellow) and soil (brown) class to the area corre­
sponding to the oil slick, a similar result in the SVM RBF model (Fig. 8).
The result of the KNN model (Fig. 8) classified the oil zone as oil (black)
and some zones as soil (brown). In the case of the Decision Tree model
(Fig. 8) a part of the oil slick was classified as soil (brown).
The area of the image that corresponds to water shows that the SVM
RBF and KNN models classify it within this same class (blue), the
Random Forest model classifies a part as vegetation (green) and another
as oil (black), and the Decision Tree model assigns a large part of the
scene to the oil class (black) and another portion to the water class
Fig. 7. Metrics calculated for the training and validation dataset, for the five models used. The blue line represents training data scores, and the orange line the
validation data scores. The highest values correspond to Random Forest, and the lowest to SVM. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the
reader is referred to the web version of this article.)
8
Marine Pollution Bulletin 184 (2022) 114132
(blue). In the results of the four models, it was seen that the coastal area
belonging to the Mississippi Delta was classified as vegetation (green),
soil (brown) and some areas as oil (black), except in SVM RBF, which
classifies the area as mostly vegetation (green).
Considering that the main objective of the model is to identify oil
spills in water, although the Random Forest model obtained the best
scores (Section 3.2.1.1), the model that presented better approximations
for detecting oil in the image was the KNN (Fig. 8) since the stain
classified as oil (black) corresponds to the area of positive contrast,
however it can be observed that the areas of the stain that present a
higher brightness are classified as soil (brown) since bare soil can pre­
sent high brightness compared to other surfaces.
Observing that the KNN model performed the best in the oil detection
task, tests were performed with some Landsat 8 OLI images of oil-free
areas (Fig. 9). In the first image, from January 12, 2014, which per­
tains to the area near the Louisiana coast, the model did not detect oil, as
the part of the Gulf of Mexico was classified as water (blue) by the
model. In the second image, December 08, 2017, which is in the Yucatan
Peninsula, the same result was obtained, i.e., the part of the sea was
classified as water (blue) by the model.
The results of testing the model on images with and without oil
corroborate the accuracy of the model. Such tests minimize the possi­
bility of false positives, as the model only succeeds in detecting oil in
2010 spill images. And in the non-oiled images, the model does not
classify the other surfaces as oil.
3.2.2. Surface detection models with important features
3.2.2.1. Select features and accuracy scores. In the selection of the
important variables using the method described in Section 2.3.2, it was
found that the order of the variables according to their value of mean
decrease in impurity (Fig. S2) was SWIR2 (0.22), NIR (0.22), SWIR1
(0.19), Blue (0.17), Green (0.12), and Red (0.06). The Blue, NIR, SWIR1,
and SWIR2 bands are the most important in the separation of the data
and differentiation of the five classes, so these were selected to create the
classification models, therefore a grid search was performed to optimize
the hyperparameters. The optimal values obtained for each model are
shown in Table S3.
To evaluate the performance of the models created with the
R. Trujillo-Acatitla et al.
important variables, the same metrics were used for the models with all
variables (Section 3.2.1.1), which were Accuracy, Balanced accuracy,
Kappa, Precision, Recall and F1 scores. In the same way as described in
Section 3.2.1.1, Random Forest was the model that obtained the highest
scores for training (0.98 in all metrics) and validation (0.94, 0.95, 0.94,
0.95, 0.95, and 0.95), followed by SVM RBF (0.91, 0.91, 0.89, 0.91,
0.91, and 0.91 for training dataset; and 0.87, 0.87, 0.83, 0.86, 0.86, and
0.87 for validation dataset) and KNN (0.89, 0.9, 0.86, 0.89, 0.89, and
0.89 for training; and 0.88, 0.89, 0.85, 0.88, 0.88, and 0.88 for valida­
tion dataset). The Decision Tree model, despite having high training
values (0.98 in all metrics), the validation scores were low, and the
difference between the scores of both sets is large (between 0.08 and
0.13) compared to the other models, e.g., the difference between the
scores obtained in the metrics of the training and validation sets of the
KNN model is 0.01. Finally, there is the SVM model (0.77, 0.8, 0.72,
0.77, 0.77, and 0.77 for training; and 0.78, 0.81, 0.73, 0.78, 0.78, and
9
Marine Pollution Bulletin 184 (2022) 114132
Fig. 8. ML model classification results for May 09,
2010, DeepWater Horizon spill image. In the first row
is a location map of the obtained Landsat 5TM image,
and the true-color composite of that image as well as
the location of where the DeepWater Horizon plat­
form was located (location marked with a black drop
and the letters DWH). In the second and third rows
are the results of the Random Forest, SVM RBF, KNN,
and Decision Tree classification models. Clouds are
shown in red, water in blue, oil in black, plastic in
yellow, vegetation in green, and soil in brown. (For
interpretation of the references to color in this figure
legend, the reader is referred to the web version of
this article.)
0.78 for validation), which has a similar behavior to the model with all
variables (Fig. 10).
3.2.2.2. Surface detection. The four best scoring models, that is
described in Section 3.2.2.1, Random Forest, SVM RBF, KNN and Deci­
sion Tree, were tested for the May 09, 2010, scene. In Random Forest, it
was observed that the oil spill slick was partially classified within the oil
class (black), another part was classified as plastic (yellow) and soil
(brown). In this same model, we observed that the area belonging to the
Gulf of Mexico was classified as mostly plastic (yellow), the coastal area
was classified as oil (black) and plastic (yellow). The SVM RBF model
classified the oil slick as plastic (yellow), the Gulf of Mexico zone as
water (blue), and the coastal zone as plastic (yellow), oil (black), and soil
(brown) (Fig. 11).
In the case of the KNN model, we observed that the oil slick was
classified in the oil class (black), the water-only part of the Gulf of
R. Trujillo-Acatitla et al. Marine Pollution Bulletin 184 (2022) 114132

Fig. 9. Landsat 8 OLI test images. The first image shows the location of the two images selected for testing. The upper right image (2014/01/12) corresponds to an
area near Louisiana's coast, a location like the images in Fig. 8. The lower right image (2017/12/08) corresponds to an area near the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. In
both images, the clouds (red) and the land were masked, so the latter is presented as seen in the RGB image. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure
legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

Fig. 10. Metrics calculated for the training and validation dataset, for the five models used with the 4 selected variables. The blue line represents training data scores,
and the orange line the validation data scores. The highest values correspond to Random Forest, and the lowest to SVM. (For interpretation of the references to color
in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

10
R. Trujillo-Acatitla et al.
Mexico was assigned to the water class (blue), and the coastal zone was
classified as mostly vegetation (green). Finally, the Decision Tree model
classified the slick as plastic (yellow), a large part of the Gulf of Mexico
as vegetation (green) as well as the coast, only a part of the Gulf of
Mexico was classified as water (blue).
In the results of these classification models, using only the important
variables, the model that obtained the best approximations in the
identification of the oil slick in the Landsat image, despite not having
obtained the highest scores, was KNN. Therefore, the test was performed
using this model on images without oil, using the same images as in
Section 3.2.1.2. Here, similar results were obtained to the model trained
with the six variables. That is, no oil was detected in the water in any
image, the part corresponding to the Gulf of Mexico was assigned only to
the water class (blue) (Fig. 12).
11
Marine Pollution Bulletin 184 (2022) 114132
Fig. 11. Results of the classification models trained
only with the parts of the spectrum belonging to the
Blue, NIR, SWIR1, and SWIR2 bands. The image
selected for this test was from Landsat 5TM on May 9,
2010, which was captured during the DeepWater
Horizon spill (the platform was located with a black
drop and the letters DWH). In the second and third
rows are the results of the Random Forest, SVM RBF,
KNN, and Decision Tree classification models. Clouds
are shown in red, water in blue, oil in black, plastic in
yellow, vegetation in green, and soil in brown. (For
interpretation of the references to color in this figure
legend, the reader is referred to the web version of
this article.)
3.2.3. Concentration estimation model
3.2.3.1. Hyperparameter values and accuracy scores. Random Forest re­
gressor was performed, which was assigned the optimal values of 10, 2,
3, and 50 to the max_depth, max_features, min_samples_split, and n_es­
timators parameters, respectively, by using the grid search. The scores to
analyze the performance of this model were calculated using the
training data, validation data, and using all data set (Table 1).
According to the R2 value of 0.90, the model generates good pre­
dictions, compared to the general linear model with an R2 value of 0.67
(Section 3.1.3). In the same way MAE, MSE, RMSE and ME were less
than linear model metrics (Table 1).
3.2.3.2. Concentration estimation. The random forest model was used as
the final model for concentration estimation due of the scores obtained
compared with the linear model (Table 1). Therefore, two tests were
R. Trujillo-Acatitla et al. Marine Pollution Bulletin 184 (2022) 114132

Fig. 12. Landsat 8 OLI test images for the KNN model
trained only with Blue, NIR, SWIR1, and SWIR2
bands. The first image shows the location of the two
images selected for testing. The upper right image
(2014/01/12) corresponds to an area near Louisiana's
coast, a location like the images in Fig. 8. The lower
right image (2017/12/08) corresponds to an area
near the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. In both images,
the clouds (red) and the land were masked, so the
latter is presented as seen in the RGB image. (For
interpretation of the references to color in this figure
legend, the reader is referred to the web version of
this article.)

although the existence of variations in the spectral response values of the

Table 1
data (Fig. 13). In the 1 % concentration row, the model estimated a
Metrics and scores obtained in the performance evaluation of the Random Forest
concentration of 6.3 % in all cases, for the 23 % row the estimate was
regression model and statistical linear model. The first columns correspond to
Random Forest metrics, and the last column corresponds to a linear model. between 19 % and 35 %, but most of the values were in 22 % and 23 %
range. In the 40 % row of the original data, the estimate was found
Training Validation All data All data
between 35 % and 40 %, for the 60 % row the estimate was in the range
Random Forest Random Forest Random Forest linear model
of 60 % and 63 %, with one data of 52 %. For the 75 % row, the estimate
MAE 1.414 3.346 2.329 11.34
was identical to the original data, and the last row, the 92 % row, the
MSE 5.422 21.239 15.18 217.44
RMSE 2.329 4.609 3.896 14.74 estimate was 88 % for all pixels.
R2 0.99 0.97 0.977 0.67 In the second test of the model, the concentration estimation for the
ME 6.26 13.36 13.36 43.25 satellite images was performed. This estimation was calculated only if
the presence of oil was detected in the image, and only in the area
classified as oil in the surface detection model. For this test, the areas
performed, the first test of the model was performed using a synthetic
identified as oil by the KNN model for important variables from May 9
image created with all data sets (Section 2.3.5). It can be observed that
and July 12, images of the 2010 oil spill (Fig. 14). Fig. 14 shows the
the results obtained from the model prediction correspond to the way
segmented part of the zone corresponding to the oil class for the images
the data of the created image were ordered, from lower to higher con­
used as a test. In the last column, it can be observed the result of the
centration (concentration value in percentage within each pixel),
concentration estimation for this zone. Both test images show that the

Fig. 13. The concentration estimation model test using a synthetic image created with the original data. A) Blue band of the synthetic image is shown, within each
pixel is the original concentration value of the data. The data were organized in a set of bands like a satellite image. B) Result of the model prediction, within each
pixel is the estimated concentration value (%). (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of
this article.)

12
R. Trujillo-Acatitla et al. Marine Pollution Bulletin 184 (2022) 114132

Fig. 14. Concentration estimation results using the Random Forest regressor. In the first column is the RGB image with the oil zoning identified by the KNN
classification model for important variables. The second column is the RGB image with the estimated concentration for the zone identified as oil. In both cases, the
clouds are masked and indicated in red. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

Fig. 15. A) Transects plotted to observe the concentration profiles for the May 09 image. The blue lines represent the profiles, green squares represent de start of
profile and yellow ellipses are the end. B) Concentration estimation profile for transect 1. C) Concentration estimation profile for transect 2. (For interpretation of the
references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

estimated concentration was between 40 % and 60 % for the areas
identified as oil.
When we made two transects in the area where the concentration
was estimated for the May 09 image, we observed the variation in the
concentration (Fig. 15A). For transect 1 (Fig. 15A), at the beginning, it
shows a concentration of 0 % because the classification model did not
identify oil in that zone, later in the same profile, the model found a
concentration between 40 % and 45 %, after this, the concentration
returns to 0 % because the model did not detect oil in that part of the
image. In the second profile (Fig. 15A) the concentration estimated
using the model was between 35 % and 45 %, and later, approximately
in pixel 700, the concentration increases, and obtains values close to 70
%, and finally, in pixel 900, the concentration reaches 0 % because no oil
was detected at that site (Fig. 15C).
With the concentration values estimated for the images, oil stability
over time was observed, since in the scenes the concentrations varied

13
R. Trujillo-Acatitla et al. Marine Pollution Bulletin 184 (2022) 114132

between 30 % and 70 % approximately; in no case did the model esti­
mate concentrations lower or higher than this interval.
4. Discussion
4.1. Materials differentiation
behaviors are observed because each datum belongs to different sam­
ples, since no specific criterion was used in the selection of the data for
each class, they were chosen only because they belonged to them. In the
case of oil, it presents, in some cases, values like water, which can be due
to the variable content of this material in the samples, since the data
belong to observations with different concentration values.

A general analysis of the spectral data for the five materials (Section
4.2. Surface classification precision
3.1.1) showed statistical differences in most of them, except oil and soil
(p-value = 0.06), and soil and vegetation (p-value = 0.85) (Fig. 2A).
In the first approach analyzed, which was to use the data corre­
However, this behavior by itself does not completely demonstrate the
sponding to the six bands, it was observed that the model with the best
differences between the materials because the distributions, dispersion,
approximations in the detection of oil was the KNN, despite id did not
range, and averages of each class are similar. For this reason, it is
obtain the best scores in the metrics (Section 3.2.1.1). However,
necessary to consider the spectral behavior of the data for each class in
confusion was still observed in the model when classifying a portion of
each band.
the stain as soil. This could be because when using all the bands, the
In the analysis per band (Fig. 2B), it can be observed a specific
model could not perform a good separation in the data, since the in­
behavior of each class, where the vegetation reflectance peak is in the
clusion of data from the visible spectrum can generate confusion (Lu
NIR band, the absorption of water is in the infrared bands, and the
et al., 2019; Winkelmann, 2005).
relatively low reflectance of the soil is in all bands with increases in the
After analyzing the importance of the variables, it was observed that
infrared part. For plastic, a wide distribution is observed in all bands,
the variables with the greatest influence on the separation of the data for
which be due to the data do not belong only to one type of plastic, but
each class were the infrared bands (NIR, SWIR1, and SWIR2), as well as
there are data for pet, light, dark and colored plastic, which, individu­
the blue band, which coincides with Fingas and Brown (2015), Leifer
ally, present differences, generating a wide distribution in all bands
et al. (2012), Lu et al. (2019), and Winkelmann (2005), who mentions
when taken as a whole.
that this spectral range is the best for separating oil from other materials.
Likewise, the spectral response of oil in each band can be observed,
The use of only these bands in the training and validation of the
when focusing on the visible part (RGB) it shows a higher reflectance
models showed, in general, that the scores of the models decreased a
than water, but it does not show specific absorption or reflection trends
little, and even so the Random Forest model was the one that obtained
due to the thin oil layers present a huge variation in their spectral
the best scores (Section 3.2.2.1). Also, with this alternative it was
response (Fingas and Brown, 2018). However, it is mentioned that oil
observed that the differences in the scores between the training and
reflectance tends to increase with decreasing wavelength, i.e. it is higher
validation data decreased, being the KNN model the one that showed
in the blue-green region (Fingas and Brown, 2017), but in this study was
differences close to 0 (Supplementary material Fig. S3A).
not completely demonstrated because in the red band the reflectance
After testing the models, it was observed that the KNN model was the
range was wider. The reason for this behavior may be that the data
one that had the best approximation in the detection of oil in water. The
analyzed not only belongs to oil at 100 % concentration, but there are
near-zero differences between the training and validation sets could
data with different concentrations and emulsions that affect its spectral
explain this result (Supplementary material Fig. S3A). Additionally,
response. Even so, it is possible to identify the absorption capacity of this
when performing the cross-validation analysis, this behavior is more
compound in the blue band (Leifer et al., 2012).
evident since the model variance in the metrics is lower compared to the
In other studies (Lu et al., 2019; Winkelmann, 2005), it has already
other ones (Supplementary material Fig. S3B). Also, we can observe that
been explained that the visible bands are not the most suitable to try
the Random Forest model, despite having the best scores, has a higher
differentiating oil from other materials, but rather the infrared bands
variance than KNN (Supplementary material Fig. S3B). These compari­
(NIR and SWIR) would be more appropriate, since the spectral charac­
sons and the results from sub-section surface detection (Fig. 11, quali­
teristics of the oil change in the NIR part (700–1100 nm). This change is
tatively ML model comparisons), indicate to us that the best model to
generated due to the oil thickness and the water-oil ratio because the
detect, quantitatively and qualitatively, oil spills is the KNN model.
water content in the stain can generate absorption at this wavelength,
Furthermore, we tested the KNN model on 8 images with oil (Sup­
modifying the reflectance values (Clark et al., 2010). Additionally,
plementary material Fig. S4) and 10 images without oil (Supplementary
carbon‑hydrogen bonds (C–H, C–H2, and C–H3), hydroxyl groups
material Fig. S5), which correspond to the spill that occurred in 2010. In
(OH), double and triple bonds of aliphatic and aromatic compounds,
this sense, it was obtained that in the 8 images the model could classify
carboxyl groups (C– – O), ester (C–O–C), amine groups (N–H) gives an
the spill stain in the oil class, and in the 10 images without oil, the model
specific spectral behavior for this part of the spectrum (720–1730 nm,
effectively did not identify oil in the water, in other words, it obtained
and 1750–1760 nm, and at 1190–1210 nm) (Leifer et al., 2012; Lu et al.,
100 % accuracy in identifying the oil in the images (Table 2 and
2019; Winkelmann, 2005), which is crucial for its differentiation.
Table S4).
Thus, it can be observed that oil, shows specific spectral properties in
In the images of the 2010 spill it can also be seen that some coastal
the visible and infrared part, showing absorption and reflection peaks,
areas were classified as oil, this could be because during the event, oil
which can generate dark, gray, shiny, opaque, and even rainbow col­
was present in the Louisiana coast and Mississippi deltas (Beyer et al.,
orations due to the variation in the incidence of light (Bonn Agreement
Accord de Bonn (BAOAC), 2007; Lu et al., 2019). This is the reason why
all bands should be incorporated into a more complete analysis, and to Table 2
Confusion matrix was performed with the classification results of the KNN model
achieve greater separability.
for the images with oil and without oil. The model obtains 100 % accuracy for
When continuing analyzing the distribution in each band (Fig. 2),
both cases.
there are data with similar dispersion since the quartiles overlap, which
Prediction
is an indication that there are observations like other materials. This is
clearly observed when analyzing individually the observations of each Images of oil Images with no oil
class (Section 3.1.2), where it is possible to identify those observations detected detected

that correlate with data from other classes (Fig. 3), and that, therefore, Observation Images with oil 8/8 0
are grouped together (Fig. 5A). Even using a non-linear method Images without
0 10 / 10
oil
(Fig. 5B), this behavior is observed, although to a lesser extent. These

14
R. Trujillo-Acatitla et al.
2016; Garcia-Pineda et al., 2017; Thyng, 2019).
4.3. Oil detection potential in optical imagery
In oil spills, environmental factors affect the thickness and concen­
tration of the oil, making the detection of oil spills a very difficult task
(Clark et al., 2010; Fingas and Brown, 2018; Leifer et al., 2012). These
factors can provoke a constant weathering process, and for this, the oil
can be found in water in oil (WO) and oil in water (OW) emulsions
(Leifer et al., 2012; Lu et al., 2020), which do not generate positive
contrasts with water and therefore not be detectable as they do not
present contrasts with water (Fig. 16A, B).
In the study by Lu et al. (2020), for the image of May 25, some areas
were identified with WO and OW emulsions through a combination of
false-color bands (SWIR1, NIR, RED), which have different colors
(Fig. 16C). In our study, the KNN classification model of important
features detected both emulsions and assigned them the oil class
(Fig. 16D), however, in both cases the stain observed in the false-color
image is not completely detected. Note that, for our case, no distinc­
tion was made between emulsions because, for the detection part, the
main objective was to detect the oil and differentiate it from other
materials.
In this sense, the partial identification made with our model may be
because oil heterogeneity caused by weathering processes, not only af­
fects the visual detection of the stain but also causes that degraded or
emulsified oil slicks can be confused with water and even organic ma­
terials, as described in Fingas and Brown (2017), Leifer et al. (2012), Sun
Fig. 16. A) True color image of May 25, 2010, white boxes correspond to the areas where emulsions are present, as reported by Lu et al. (2020). B) True color images
of the approach to WO and OW emulsions. C) False color images (SWIR1, NIR, R) of the approach to the zones with WO and OW emulsions. D) Result of the
classifications with KNN for important features, both emulsions were classified as oil, however, they were not detected in their entirety.
15
Marine Pollution Bulletin 184 (2022) 114132
et al. (2015), and sometimes present spectral characteristics similar to
plastic, as mentioned by Hörig et al. (2001).
Also, in the detection of oil in optical images, it is important to
consider that areas with high contrast can be mistaken for oil slicks due
to the colorations present in it (Bonn Agreement Accord de Bonn
(BAOAC), 2007; Lu et al., 2020, 2019). This is an aspect that must be
considered when obtaining and processing the image, since if there is
cloudiness or low wind speed in the scene, there will be areas with high
contrast that can be identified as oil, as mentioned by Leifer et al.
(2012).
4.4. Spectral data and optical imaging for concentration estimation
Linear models (Section 3.1.3), general (Fig. 6A) and by band
(Fig. 6B), were developed to analyze the relationship between reflec­
tance and concentration, showed that the higher the concentration, the
lower the reflectance. Previous studies have mentioned that having data
from oil samples with different concentrations, linear and nonlinear
models can be developed to relate the reflectance to concentration, and
thus predict the hydrocarbon degradation process (Daling et al., 2014,
1990; Daling and StrØm, 1999; Lu et al., 2019). In our case, using the ML
model to estimate the concentration, instead of a conventional linear
model, allowed us to increase the certainty in the estimation process
(Section 3.2.3.1).
In the results obtained in the concentration estimation (Section
3.2.3.2), it was observed that the estimated concentration for the four
images fluctuated between 40 % and 60 % (Fig. 14). When profiles are
R. Trujillo-Acatitla et al. Marine Pollution Bulletin 184 (2022) 114132

made, this fluctuation can be observed in the estimated concentration
along both lines drawn in the image (Fig. 15B and C). This fluctuation in
concentration, observed in the profiles, is an expected behavior, since
the higher the concentration, the lower the reflectance and vice versa, in
other words, reflectance and concentration have an inverse relationship,
which is consistent with that mentioned in Lu et al. (2019).
In the graphs (Fig. 17A) corresponding to transect 1 (Fig. 15B), low
reflectance values are observed at the beginning because the profile
starts where no oil was found, and which was classified as water by the
model, therefore these values correspond to a behavior like water, which
is clearer in the SWIR1 and SWIR2 bands with values close to 0, since
water absorbs the greatest amount of electromagnetic radiation in these
areas of the spectrum. And when oil is detected, an abrupt increase in
reflectance values is observed.
Therefore, with the ML model, trained using oil data with different
concentrations, it generates a good approximation in the concentration
estimation. However, this is a first approximation, which indicates that
this model can be improved.
4.5. Considerations
Although this study demonstrates the possibility of detecting oil
slicks in optical images using spectral response data and ML algorithms,
and the implementation of the most important features to differentiate
the materials, there are certain aspects that must be considered to
implement a model capable of correctly differentiating oil from other
materials. It should be considered that oil is constantly exposed to
environmental factors that promote its degradation (Daling et al., 2014;
Daling and StrØm, 1999). Also, the proximity to the coasts, and sedi­
ment or sludge flows near the source of the spill, mean that oil can be
combined with other materials, generating in some cases mineral ag­
gregates, or the sinking of heavy parts of oil (Daly et al., 2016). These
degradation and combination phenomena generate a large heterogene­
ity in the spectral response values of the oil, making differentiating the
oil slick from other materials a complicated task. This can be remedied
by increasing the number of observations of oil and other materials, to
achieve greater separability. Also, can be improved by adding different
types of oils and by having satellite images properly segmented, by
material class. And if possible, to have in situ measurements that allow

Fig. 17. Plots of the reflectance values of the profiles from Fig. 15A for each band used. Only the May 09 image is used. The green square represents the start, and the
yellow ellipse represents the end of the profile in the image A) Corresponds to transect 1 in Fig. 15A. B) corresponds to transect 2 in Fig. 15A. (For interpretation of
the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

16
R. Trujillo-Acatitla et al.
the verification of the results.
In the concentration estimation part, constant weathering of the oil
must be considered since phenomena can occur overnight, generating
variations at the sub-pixel level, making it complicated to track the
evolution of oil slick (Svejkovsky et al., 2016), in addition the satellites
have the disadvantage of providing outdated information due to their
low temporal resolution (Garcia-Pineda et al., 2013). However, it has
been pointed out that if the oil is well characterized and the environ­
mental conditions of wind speed, sea state, currents, salinity, tempera­
ture, and solar insolation are known, it should be possible to calculate
the rates of many of these processes and thus establish how the condition
of the oil changes with time (Daling et al., 1990). Additionally, it should
be considered that, as in the classification methods, there may be bands
that generate noise or other ones that provide relevant information to
improve the model estimates.
These issues make the task of oil detection, as well as its monitoring
over time, a complex task. Oil spill detection remote sensing is a field
that needs to be studied and expanded. However, this work provides a
perspective on the application of ML algorithms trained with spectral
response data in the detection of oil in optical images, covering the
visible and infrared spectrum, which can be used to support the response
and attention to future oil spills.
5. Conclusions
Spectral response data (from laboratory techniques, field spectros­
copy and satellite data) are helpful for detecting surfaces in optical
imaging. However, various weathering and mixing processes, as well as
physical and chemical properties, promote some data to resemble other
surfaces. Using statistical analysis to study the spectral data of the sur­
faces provided a great perspective to understand and explore their
behavior. Due to its nature, the materials showed characteristic behavior
in certain ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum, which helped to
discriminate them. The generated ML models, for all bands obtained
good scores; however, they could not fully discriminate the surfaces in
satellite images. By selecting the Blue, NIR, SWIR1, and SWIR2 bands,
the differences between the training and validation values decreased,
thus improving the models. In this study, the model with the best ap­
proximations for oil detection, quantitatively and qualitatively, was
KNN for the Blue, NIR, SWIR1, and SWIR2 bands. This model showed
good precision in oil detection, since only identified oil in images with
the presence of oil, i.e., true positives, and in images with the absence of
oil the model did not identify it. In the case of oil concentration esti­
mation, using the spectral response data of oil with different concen­
trations is possible to generate oil concentration estimations in satellite
images. There is a certain degree of uncertainty in the estimates due to
the existence of many physical and chemical phenomena that alter the
composition of the oil in the real environment. For both supervised
learning models generated, detection of oil (classification of surfaces)
and concentration estimation (regression), it is convenient to increase
the number of example data to obtain better models. The use of spectral
response data, the selection of important variables and ML techniques,
and the results of our methodology increase the applicability of optical
satellite imagery in oil spill detection.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Trujillo-Acatitla Rubicel: Method, Research, Data analysis, Writing
- original draft, Writing - revision and editing. Tuxpan-Vargas Jose:
Research, Writing - revision and editing, Project management. Ovando-
Vázquez Cesare: Research, Data analysis, Method, Writing - proof­
reading and editing, Project management.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
17
Marine Pollution Bulletin 184 (2022) 114132
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Data availability
No data was used for the research described in the article.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y
Tecnología (CONACYT, https://conacyt.mx/), through grant CVU:
699765. We thank the División de Geociencias Aplicadas (https://ipicyt.
edu.mx/Geociencias_Aplicadas/areas_geociencias_aplicadas.php) and
the Centro Nacional de Supercómputo (https://cns.ipicyt.edu.mx/) of
the Instituto Potosino de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica A.C.
(https://www.ipicyt.edu.mx/index.php) for the computational grant
TKII-R2018-COV1, also to the Alianza en Inteligencia Artificial for their
support (https://www.consorcioia.mx/). And special thanks to Erandi
Monterrubio-Martínez for all her support in the revision of this docu­
ment for the language improvement.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.
org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2022.114132.
References
Al-Ruzouq, R., Gibril, M.B.A., Shanableh, A., Kais, A., Hamed, O., Al-Mansoori, S.,
Khalil, M.A., 2020. Sensors, features, and machine learning for oil spill detection and
monitoring: a review. Remote Sens. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12203338.
Arslan, N., 2018. Assessment of oil spills using sentinel 1 C-band SAR and Landsat 8
multispectral sensors. Environ. Monit. Assess. 190, 637. https://doi.org/10.1007/
s10661-018-7017-4.
Baldridge, A.M., Hook, S.J., Grove, C.I., Rivera, G., 2009. The ASTER spectral library
version 2.0. Remote Sens. Environ. 113, 711–715. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
rse.2008.11.007.
Balogun, A.-L., Yekeen, S.T., Pradhan, B., Althuwaynee, O.F., 2020. Spatio-temporal
analysis of oil spill impact and recovery pattern of coastal vegetation and wetland
using multispectral satellite Landsat 8-OLI imagery and machine learning models.
Remote Sens. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12071225.
Bar, S., Parida, B.R., Pandey, A.C., 2020. Landsat-8 and Sentinel-2 based Forest fire burn
area mapping using machine learning algorithms on GEE cloud platform over
Uttarakhand, Western himalaya. Remote Sens. Appl. Soc. Environ. 18, 100324
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rsase.2020.100324.
Bessis, J.-L., 2003. International Charter “Space and Major Disasters” Evolution. https://
doi.org/10.2514/6.iac-03-c.2.01.
Beyer, J., Trannum, H.C., Bakke, T., Hodson, P.V., Collier, T.K., 2016. Environmental
effects of the Deepwater horizon oil spill: a review. Mar. Pollut. Bull. 110, 28–51.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2016.06.027.
Bonn Agreement Accord de Bonn (BAOAC), 2007. Bonn Agreement Oil Appearance
Code.
Burgherr, P., 2007. In-depth analysis of accidental oil spills from tankers in the context of
global spill trends from all sources. J. Hazard. Mater. 140, 245–256. https://doi.org/
10.1016/j.jhazmat.2006.07.030.
Cantorna, D., Dafonte, C., Iglesias, A., Arcay, B., 2019. Oil spill segmentation in SAR
images using convolutional neural networks. A comparative analysis with clustering
and logistic regression algorithms. Appl. Soft Comput. 84, 105716 https://doi.org/
10.1016/j.asoc.2019.105716.
Cao, Z., Ma, R., Duan, H., Pahlevan, N., Melack, J., Shen, M., Xue, K., 2020. A machine
learning approach to estimate chlorophyll-a from Landsat-8 measurements in inland
lakes. Remote Sens. Environ. 248, 111974 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
rse.2020.111974.
Chander, G., Markham, B.L., Helder, D.L., Ali, E., 2009. Remote sensing of environment
summary of current radiometric calibration coef fi cients for Landsat MSS , TM , ETM
+ , and EO-1 ALI sensors. Remote Sens. Environ. 113, 893–903. https://doi.org/
10.1016/j.rse.2009.01.007.
Chen, B., Ye, X., Zhang, B., Jing, L., Lee, K., 2019. Chapter 22 - marine oil
spills—preparedness and countermeasures. In: Sheppard, C.B.T.-W.S. an E.E. (Ed.).
Academic Press, pp. 407–426. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-805052-
1.00025-5.
Chowdhury, S., Evans, C., Shipman, T.C., 2021. In: Singhroy, V. (Ed.), The Role of
Landsat-8 Multispectral Data in Spill Response: Three Case Studies BT - Advances in
Remote Sensing for Infrastructure Monitoring. Springer International Publishing,
Cham, pp. 291–305. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59109-0_13.
Clark, R.N., Swayze, G.A., Leifer, I., Livo, K.E., Kokaly, R.F., Hoefen, T., Lundeen, S.,
Eastwood, M., Green, R.O., Pearson, N., Sarture, C., McCubbin, I., Roberts, D.,
R. Trujillo-Acatitla et al.
Bradley, E., Steele, D., Ryan, T., Dominguez, R., 2010. A method for quantitative
mapping of thick oil spills using imaging spectroscopy. Open-File Rep. https://doi.
org/10.3133/ofr20101167.
Cococcioni, M., Corucci, L., Masini, A., Nardelli, F., 2012. SVME: an ensemble of support
vector machines for detecting oil spills from full resolution MODIS images. Ocean
Dyn. 62, 449–467. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10236-011-0510-8.
CONAE (Comision Nacional de Actividades Espaciales) , n.d. Biblioteca de Firmas
Espectrales de CONAE.
Daling, P.S., StrØm, T., 1999. Weathering of oils at sea: model/field data comparisons.
Spill Sci. Technol. Bull. 5, 63–74. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1353-2561(98)00051-6.
Daling, P.S., Brandvik, P.J., Mackay, D., Johansen, O., 1990. Characterization of crude
oils for environmental purposes. Oil Chem. Pollut. 7, 199–224. https://doi.org/
10.1016/S0269-8579(05)80027-9.
Daling, P.S., Leirvik, F., Almås, I.K., Brandvik, P.J., Hansen, B.H., Lewis, A., Reed, M.,
2014. Surface weathering and dispersibility of MC252 crude oil. Mar. Pollut. Bull.
87, 300–310. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2014.07.005.
Daly, K.L., Passow, U., Chanton, J., Hollander, D., 2016. Assessing the impacts of oil-
associated marine snow formation and sedimentation during and after the
Deepwater horizon oil spill. Anthropocene 13, 18–33. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
ancene.2016.01.006.
De Kerf, T., Gladines, J., Sels, S., Vanlanduit, S., 2020. Oil spill detection using machine
learning and infrared images. Remote Sens. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12244090.
de Mendiburu, F., 2020. agricolae: Statistical Procedures for Agricultural Research.
De Padova, D., Mossa, M., Adamo, M., De Carolis, G., Pasquariello, G., 2017. Synergistic
use of an oil drift model and remote sensing observations for oil spill monitoring.
Environ. Sci. Pollut. Res. 24, 5530–5543. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-016-
8214-8.
Distribution, A.S., 2020. Anaconda Software Distribution. Anaconda Doc.
Everitt, B., 1992. Book reviews : Chambers JM, Hastie TJ eds 1992: Statisti cal models in
S. California: Wadsworth and Brooks/Cole. ISBN 0 534 16765-9. Stat. Methods Med.
Res. 1, 220–221. https://doi.org/10.1177/096228029200100208, 4th edn.
Fingas, M., Brown, C.E., 2017. Chapter 5 - oil spill remote sensing. In: Fingas, M.B.T.-O.S.
S. and T. (Ed.), Second E. Gulf Professional Publishing, Boston, pp. 305–385. https://
doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-809413-6.00005-9.
Fingas, M., Brown, C.E., 2018. A review of oil spill remote sensing. Sensors. https://doi.
org/10.3390/s18010091.
Fingas, M., Brown, E.C., 2015. Oil spill remote sensing. In: Fingas, M. (Ed.), Handbook of
Oil Spill Science and Technology. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Fisher, R.A., 1992. Statistical methods for research workers. In: Breakthroughs in
Statistics. Springer, pp. 66–70.
Freedman, D., Pisani, R., Purves, R., 2007. In: Pisani, R. Purves (Ed.), Statistics,
international student edition. WW Nort. Company, New York. 4th edn.
Garcia-Pineda, O., MacDonald, I., Hu, C., Svejkovsky, J., Hess, M., Dukhovskoy, D.,
Morey, S., 2013. Detection of floating oil anomalies from the Deepwater horizon oil
spill with synthetic aperture radar. Oceanography 26. https://doi.org/10.5670/
oceanog.2013.38.
Garcia-Pineda, O., Holmes, J., Rissing, M., Jones, R., Wobus, C., Svejkovsky, J., Hess, M.,
2017. Detection of oil near shorelines during the Deepwater horizon oil spill using
synthetic aperture radar (SAR). Remote Sens. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs9060567.
GDAL/OGR Contributors, 2021. {GDAL/OGR} Geospatial Data Abstraction Software
Library. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5884351.
Ghorbanian, A., Kakooei, M., Amani, M., Mahdavi, S., Mohammadzadeh, A.,
Hasanlou, M., 2020. Improved land cover map of Iran using sentinel imagery within
Google earth engine and a novel automatic workflow for land cover classification
using migrated training samples. ISPRS J. Photogramm. Remote Sens. 167, 276–288.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isprsjprs.2020.07.013.
Harris, C.R., Millman, K.J., van der Walt, S.J., Gommers, R., Virtanen, P.,
Cournapeau, D., Wieser, E., Taylor, J., Berg, S., Smith, N.J., Kern, R., Picus, M.,
Hoyer, S., van Kerkwijk, M.H., Brett, M., Haldane, A., del Río, J.F., Wiebe, M.,
Peterson, P., Gérard-Marchant, P., Sheppard, K., Reddy, T., Weckesser, W.,
Abbasi, H., Gohlke, C., Oliphant, T.E., 2020. Array programming with {NumPy}.
Nature 585, 357–362. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2649-2.
Hooper, C.H., 1982. The IXTOC I oil spill : the federal scientific response. In: NOAA
Special Report.
Hörig, B., Kühn, F., Oschütz, F., Lehmann, F., 2001. HyMap hyperspectral remote sensing
to detect hydrocarbons. Int. J. Remote Sens. 22, 1413–1422. https://doi.org/
10.1080/01431160120909.
Hu, C., Feng, L., Holmes, J., Swayze, G.A., Leifer, I., Melton, C., Garcia, O.,
MacDonald, I., Hess, M., Muller-Karger, F., Graettinger, G., Green, R., 2018. Remote
sensing estimation of surface oil volume during the 2010 Deepwater horizon oil
blowout in the Gulf of Mexico: scaling up AVIRIS observations with MODIS
measurements. J. Appl. Remote. Sens. 12, 1. https://doi.org/10.1117/1.
JRS.12.026008.
Hunter, J.D., 2007. Matplotlib: a 2D graphics environment. Comput. Sci. Eng. 9, 90–95.
https://doi.org/10.1109/MCSE.2007.55.
Ivshina, I.B., Kuyukina, M.S., Krivoruchko, A.V., Elkin, A.A., Makarov, S.O.,
Cunningham, C.J., Peshkur, T.A., Atlas, R.M., Philp, J.C., 2015. Oil spill problems
and sustainable response strategies through new technologies. Environ. Sci. Process.
Impacts 17, 1201–1219. https://doi.org/10.1039/C5EM00070J.
James, G., Witten, D., Hastie, T., Tibshirani, R., 2013. An Introduction to Statistical
Learning, Springer Texts in Statistics. Springer, New York, New York, NY. https://
doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7138-7.
Kokaly, R.F., Clark, R.N., Swayze, G.A., Livo, K.E., Hoefen, T.M., Pearson, N.C., Wise, R.
A., Benzel, W.M., Lowers, H.A., Driscoll, R.L., Klein, A.J., 2017. USGS Spectral
Library Version 7. Reston, VA, Data Series. https://doi.org/10.3133/ds1035.
18
Marine Pollution Bulletin 184 (2022) 114132
Konik, M., Bradtke, K., 2016. Object-oriented approach to oil spill detection using
ENVISAT ASAR images. ISPRS J. Photogramm. Remote Sens. 118, 37–52. https://
doi.org/10.1016/j.isprsjprs.2016.04.006.
Krijthe, J.H., 2015. {Rtsne}: T-Distributed Stochastic Neighbor Embedding Using Barnes-
Hut Implementation.
Kubat, M., Holte, R.C., Matwin, S., 1998. Machine learning for the detection of oil spills
in satellite radar images. Mach. Learn. 30, 195–215. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:
1007452223027.
Lary, D.J., Zewdie, G.K., Liu, X., Wu, D., Levetin, E., Allee, R.J., Malakar, N., Walker, A.,
Mussa, H., Mannino, A., Aurin, D., 2018. In: Mathieu, P.-P., Aubrecht, C. (Eds.),
Machine Learning Applications for Earth Observation BT - Earth Observation Open
Science and Innovation. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp. 165–218.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65633-5_8.
Leifer, I., Lehr, W.J., Simecek-Beatty, D., Bradley, E., Clark, R., Dennison, P., Hu, Y.,
Matheson, S., Jones, C.E., Holt, B., Reif, M., Roberts, D.A., Svejkovsky, J.,
Swayze, G., Wozencraft, J., 2012. State of the art satellite and airborne marine oil
spill remote sensing: application to the BP Deepwater horizon oil spill. Remote Sens.
Environ. 124, 185–209. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2012.03.024.
Li, P., Cai, Q., Lin, W., Chen, B., Zhang, B., 2016. Offshore oil spill response practices and
emerging challenges. Mar. Pollut. Bull. 110, 6–27. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
marpolbul.2016.06.020.
Lin, Y., Li, L., Yu, J., Hu, Y., Zhang, T., Ye, Z., Syed, A., Li, J., 2021. An optimized
machine learning approach to water pollution variation monitoring with time-series
Landsat images. Int. J. Appl. Earth Obs. Geoinf. 102, 102370 https://doi.org/
10.1016/j.jag.2021.102370.
Liu, B., Li, Y., Chen, P., Zhu, X., 2016. Extraction of oil spill information using decision
tree based minimum noise fraction transform. J. Indian Soc. Remote Sens. 44,
421–426. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12524-015-0499-4.
Lu, Y., Shi, J., Wen, Y., Hu, C., Zhou, Y., Sun, S., Zhang, M., Mao, Z., Liu, Y., 2019.
Optical interpretation of oil emulsions in the ocean – part I: laboratory
measurements and proof-of-concept with AVIRIS observations. Remote Sens.
Environ. 230, 111183 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2019.05.002.
Lu, Y., Shi, J., Hu, C., Zhang, M., Sun, S., Liu, Y., 2020. Optical interpretation of oil
emulsions in the ocean – part II: applications to multi-band coarse-resolution
imagery. Remote Sens. Environ. 242, 111778 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
rse.2020.111778.
Luciani, R., Laneve, G., 2018. Oil Spill Detection Using Optical Sensors: A Multi-
Temporal Approach. In: Satell. Oceanogr. Meteorol. https://doi.org/10.18063/som.
v0i0.816.
Maechler, M., Struyf, A., Hubert, M., Hornik, K., Studer, M., Roudier, P., 2015. Package
‘Cluster’: Cluster Analysis Basics and Extensions. R Top. Doc.
McKinney, W., 2010. Data structures for statistical computing in python. In: van der
Walt, S., Millman, J. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 9th Python in Science Conference,
pp. 56–61. https://doi.org/10.25080/Majora-92bf1922-00a.
Meerdink, S.K., Hook, S.J., Roberts, D.A., Abbott, E.A., 2019. The ECOSTRESS spectral
library version 1.0. Remote Sens. Environ. 230, 111196 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
rse.2019.05.015.
Mitchell, T., 1997. Machine learning, machine learning. McGraw-Hill Science/
Engineering/Math. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00116892.
Mohammadi, M., Sharifi, A., Hosseingholizadeh, M., Tariq, A., 2021. Detection of oil
pollution using SAR and optical remote sensing imagery: a case study of the Persian
Gulf. J. Indian Soc. Remote Sens. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12524-021-01399-2.
Mohammadiun, S., Hu, G., Gharahbagh, A.A., Li, J., Hewage, K., Sadiq, R., 2021.
Intelligent computational techniques in marine oil spill management: a critical
review. J. Hazard. Mater. 419, 126425 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
jhazmat.2021.126425.
Ozigis, M.S., Kaduk, J.D., Jarvis, C.H., 2019. Mapping terrestrial oil spill impact using
machine learning random forest and Landsat 8 OLI imagery: a case site within the
Niger Delta region of Nigeria. Environ. Sci. Pollut. Res. 26, 3621–3635. https://doi.
org/10.1007/s11356-018-3824-y.
Pearson, K., 1901. LIII. On lines and planes of closest fit to systems of points in space.
London, Edinburgh, Dublin Philos. Mag. J. Sci. 2, 559–572.
Pedregosa, F., Varoquaux, G., Gramfort, A., Michel, V., Thirion, B., Grisel, O.,
Blondel, M., Prettenhofer, P., Weiss, R., Dubourg, V., Vanderplas, J., Passos, A.,
Cournapeau, D., Brucher, M., Perrot, M., Duchesnay, E., 2011. Scikit-learn: machine
learning in python. J. Mach. Learn. Res. 12, 2825–2830.
QGIS Development Team, O., 2018. QGIS Geographic Information System.
Rousseeuw, P.J., 1987. Silhouettes: a graphical aid to the interpretation and validation of
cluster analysis. J. Comput. Appl. Math. 20, 53–65. https://doi.org/10.1016/0377-
0427(87)90125-7.
Simon, H.A., 1996. In: Edit, Third (Ed.), The Sciences of the Artificial. MIT Press, London,
England, Cambridge, MA. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0898-1221(97)82941-0.
Singh, R.K., Singh, P., Drews, M., Kumar, P., Singh, H., Gupta, A.K., Govil, H., Kaur, A.,
Kumar, M., 2021. A machine learning-based classification of LANDSAT images to
map land use and land cover of India. Remote Sens. Appl. Soc. Environ. 24, 100624
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rsase.2021.100624.
Singha, S., Bellerby, T.J., Trieschmann, O., 2013. Satellite oil spill detection using
artificial neural networks. IEEE JSel. Top. Appl. Earth Obs. Remote Sens. 6,
2355–2363. https://doi.org/10.1109/JSTARS.2013.2251864.
Sun, S., Hu, C., Tunnell, J.W., 2015. Surface oil footprint and trajectory of the ixtoc-I oil
spill determined from Landsat/MSS and CZCS observations. Mar. Pollut. Bull. 101,
632–641. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2015.10.036.
Svejkovsky, J., Hess, M., Muskat, J., Nedwed, T.J., McCall, J., Garcia, O., 2016.
Characterization of surface oil thickness distribution patterns observed during the
Deepwater horizon (MC-252) oil spill with aerial and satellite remote sensing. Mar.
Pollut. Bull. 110, 162–176. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2016.06.066.
R. Trujillo-Acatitla et al.
R Core Team, 2021. R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing.
Temitope Yekeen, S., Balogun, A.-L., 2020. Advances in remote sensing technology,
machine learning and deep learning for marine oil spill detection, prediction and
vulnerability assessment. Remote Sens. 12. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12203416.
Thyng, K.M., 2019. Deepwater horizon oil could have naturally reached Texas beaches.
Mar. Pollut. Bull. 149, 110527 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2019.110527.
Topouzelis, K., Psyllos, A., 2012. Oil spill feature selection and classification using
decision tree forest on SAR image data. ISPRS J. Photogramm. Remote Sens. 68,
135–143. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isprsjprs.2012.01.005.
Topouzelis, K., Tarchi, D., Vespe, M., Posada, M., Muellenhoff, O., Ferraro, G., 2015.
Detection, tracking, and remote sensing: satellites and image processing (Spaceborne
oil spill detection). In: Fingas, M. (Ed.), Handbook of Oil Spill Science and
Technology. John Wiley & Sons Inc.
Tukey, J.W., 1977. Exploratory data analysis. In: Reading. MA.
van der Maaten, L., Hinton, G., 2012. Visualizing non-metric similarities in multiple
maps. Mach. Learn. 87, 33–55. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10994-011-5273-4.
Van Rossum, G., Drake, F.L., 2009. Python 3 Reference Manual. CreateSpace, Scotts
Valley, CA.
Verrelst, J., Muñoz, J., Alonso, L., Delegido, J., Rivera, J.P., Camps-Valls, G., Moreno, J.,
2012. Machine learning regression algorithms for biophysical parameter retrieval:
opportunities for Sentinel-2 and -3. Remote Sens. Environ. 118, 127–139. https://
doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2011.11.002.
Warnes, G.R., Bolker, B., Bonebakker, L., Gentleman, R., Huber, W., Liaw, A., Lumley, T.,
Maechler, M., Magnusson, A., Moeller, S., Schwartz, M., Venables, B., 2020. gplots:
Various R Programming Tools for Plotting Data.
19
Marine Pollution Bulletin 184 (2022) 114132
Winkelmann, K.H., 2005. Onthe Applicability of Imaging Spectrometry for the Detection
and Investigation ofContaminated Sites With Particular Consideration Given to the
Detection of FuelHydrocarbon Contaminants in Soil.
Wolanin, A., Camps-Valls, G., Gómez-Chova, L., Mateo-García, G., van der Tol, C.,
Zhang, Y., Guanter, L., 2019. Estimating crop primary productivity with Sentinel-2
and landsat 8 using machine learning methods trained with radiative transfer
simulations. Remote Sens. Environ. 225, 441–457. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
rse.2019.03.002.
Yang, Z., Chen, Z., Lee, K., Owens, E., Boufadel, M.C., An, C., Taylor, E., 2021. Decision
support tools for oil spill response (OSR-DSTs): approaches, challenges, and future
research perspectives. Mar. Pollut. Bull. 167, 112313 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
marpolbul.2021.112313.
Zhou, T., Geng, Y., Ji, C., Xu, X., Wang, H., Pan, J., Bumberger, J., Haase, D., Lausch, A.,
2021. Prediction of soil organic carbon and the C: N ratio on a national scale using
machine learning and satellite data: a comparison between Sentinel-2, Sentinel-3
and Landsat-8 images. Sci. Total Environ. 755, 142661 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
scitotenv.2020.142661.
Zhu, Z., Woodcock, C.E., 2012. Object-based cloud and cloud shadow detection in
landsat imagery. Remote Sens. Environ. 118, 83–94. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
rse.2011.10.028.
Zhu, Z., Wang, S., Woodcock, C.E., 2015. Improvement and expansion of the fmask
algorithm: cloud, cloud shadow, and snow detection for landsats 4–7, 8, and sentinel
2 images. Remote Sens. Environ. 159, 269–277. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
rse.2014.12.014.