GOM WM RS2 SAR TCNNA: Oil Slick Remote Sensing Data from the Gulf of Mexico

NOAA's Deepwater Horizon Lessons Learned Studies collected these remote sensing data to develop methods for estimating oil slick coverage and thickness. The dataset includes synoptic satellite and airborne imagery from field research at the Mississippi Canyon lease block #20 (MC20) site, undertaken in 2016, 2017, and 2018. This research was funded by the U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, and NOAA.

Use Cases

• Training computer vision models to detect oil slicks based on satellite and airborne imagery.
• Analyzing oil thickness and emulsion mixtures based on remote sensing platform data.
• Developing synoptic methods for oil slick characterization based on surface and subsurface data collection.
• Studying chronic oil discharge events based on data from the ongoing MC20 site.

Strengths

• Data is part of a formal NOAA study funded by the U.S. Department of the Interior and BSEE.
• Collection involved multiple remote sensing platforms (satellite and airborne) for synoptic analysis.
• Field research was conducted over a multi-year period (2016-2018).

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and dataset size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Available file formats are PDF and HTML, which may not be directly machine-readable for analysis.

Provenance

Source

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Department of Commerce.

Collection Method

Field research involving synoptic collection of satellite imagery, airborne imagery, surface oil characterization, and subsurface oil slick data.

Time Range

2016, 2017, and 2018.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 22:27:25.962423; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Mississippi Canyon lease block #20 (MC20) in the Gulf of Mexico, and the Ohmsett test tank.