Ustin, Susan: University of California Davis (Project Lead)
Project Funding:
2012 - 2015
NRA: 2011 NASA: Terrestrial Ecology
Funded by NASA
Abstract:
In response to the request for studies to analyze coastal ecosystem impacts of the 2010 Deep-water Horizon Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico utilizing NASA airborne data, this proposal addresses early and longer-term impacts in the ecologically sensitive coastal wetlands, focused on analysis of NASAs Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS) airborne data. These coastal salt marsh and wetland ecosystems
are among the most productive coastal ecosystems and support a critical regionally important economic base. These data will be processed to produce baseline maps of oiled shorelines, vegetation types, and evidence of injury to the wetland communities, specifically to answer the series of science questions we pose about the effect of crude oil, extent of injury in different wetland types, from single or multiple impacts of crude oil. These data will be compared to USGS and Tulane University acquired field data at impacted and non-oil impacted sites around the coastal wetlands of Louisiana and Mississippi. In addition, we will work with local groups who have data from other sites to use in validating our maps of oil damage. The airborne data are discontinuous strips and therefore, these high spectral resolution datasets will be used to train synoptic WorldView-2 and/or Landsat data to obtain continuous maps of the shoreline. These data will be compared to AVIRIS airborne data acquired in 2011 to determine the extent of continuing impacts on ecologically sensitive wetlands. More than 240 flightlines were collected in 2010 between May and October, extending from Louisiana to Florida, and 208 lines that were reflown between April and November, 2011.
We respond to Section 2.3 of the A.4. Terrestrial Ecology program announcement (NNH11ZDA001N-A4_TE), by proposing a two year study to exploit existing airborne and satellite data collected over the wetland communities of the Gulf Coast in 2010 and 2011. We address both aspects of the requested studies: 1) characterize and understand the effects of the oil spill on the coastal ecosystems adjacent to the Gulf of Mexico, and/or 2) assess terrestrial ecosystem responses (i.e., degradation and recovery to assist management) in the U.S. Gulf coastal environment to the oil spill and clean-up effort. We propose to characterize the effects of the BP Horizon oil spill along the Gulf of Mexico to the coastal wetland ecosystem and assess the response as a way to improve general understanding of oil impacts to coastal wetland and near shore ecosystems.
We will concentrate on Barataria and Terrebonne Bays, the Birds Foot area of the Mississippi delta, and Lake Borgne/Black Bay, which have known oil landfall and damage to ecosystems, and where validation data is available or can be collected efficiently. We will also apply our analysis methods to AVIRIS and other data collected over the Barrier Islands of Mississippi (Cat, Ship, Horn, Petit Bois and Dauphin) and the Chandeleur Islands. This study will lead to better methods to predict environmental degradation and better management of recovery efforts in clean-up and revegetation efforts. In addition to AVIRIS, data includes the MODIS and ASTER Simulator (MASTER), and the Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperature Radar (UAVSAR), and the Spatially Enhanced Broadband Array Spectrograph System (SEBASS) and the WorldView-2 and Landsat satelllites. We have already begun to produce baseline maps of vegetation types using MESMA method and evidence of injury to the wetland communities for oiled and unoiled beaches using spectral indexes and PROSAIL radiative transfer model for Barataria Bay from the 2010 AVIRIS data, demonstrating that the methods we propose will answer the TE calls science questions about the locations and types of injury in different wetland and coastal margin ecosystem types.
Publications:
Khanna, S., Santos, M., Koltunov, A., Shapiro, K., Lay, M., Ustin, S. 2017. Marsh Loss Due to Cumulative Impacts of Hurricane Isaac and the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in Louisiana. Remote Sensing. 9(2), 169. DOI: 10.3390/rs9020169
Khanna, S., Santos, M., Ustin, S., Shapiro, K., Haverkamp, P., Lay, M. 2018. Comparing the Potential of Multispectral and Hyperspectral Data for Monitoring Oil Spill Impact. Sensors. 18(2), 558. DOI: 10.3390/s18020558
More details may be found in the following project profile(s):