Oil Pollution in the Kerch Strait Based on Five-Year Monitoring with Synthetic Aperture Radar: Current Status and Main Sources.

The results of the five-year (2017–2021) monitoring of oil pollution in the Kerch Strait and its prestrait regions are analyzed. The synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images of the European Sentinel-1A and Sentinel-1B satellites, both real-time and archived, representing valuable material for searching, detecting, and studying the character of oil pollution caused by spills of crude oil, petroleum products, and other oily substances, have been used for monitoring. During monitoring, 2597 oil slicks with a total area of 1120.4 km2 are detected on 481 SAR images. The main sources of pollution have been identified, in descending order, they are cargo transshipment areas in the strait, the port of Taman with its berthing complex, and prestrait anchorages in the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea. In addition, natural seep manifestations in the adjacent Black Sea shelf have been discovered, they create a natural hydrocarbon background that should be taken into account. Based on the monitoring results, a tendency towards an overall decrease in spills is revealed, despite their growth in 2016–2019. Monitoring with SAR using the geoinformation approach has shown its high efficiency for the problems of real-time and retrospective analysis of the satellite imagery data concerning oil pollution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]