Application of remote sensing to monitoring and studying dispersion in ocean dumping

Experiments conducted in the coastal waters of the United States indicate that plumes resulting from ocean dumping of sewage sludge and industrial wastes have distinguishable spectral characteristics. Remotely sensed wide area synoptic coverage provides information on these pollution features that is not readily available from other sources. Results indicate that qualitative analysis techniques may be used for the location, identification, and mapping of plumes resulting from ocean dumping of waste materials. An in-scene background elimination technique was developed that “normalizes” atmospheric and other environmental effects, thereby potentially providing a means of plume identification that is independent of the specific scene and the multispectral scanner used. Application of this technique to data from several experiments demonstrates that plumes resulting from sewage sludge and several industrial wastes have distinctive spectral characteristics over a range of environmental conditions and for two multispectral scanners flown on aircraft at altitudes of 3.0 and 19.7 kilometers.