13. The Role of Landsat-8 Multispectral Data in Spill Response: Three Case Studies

Landsat multispectral imagery has become a valuable resource for decision makers in environmental emergency response over the past three decades. In this chapter, Landsat-8 imagery was primarily utilized to assist spill investigations with three case studies: (1) wastewater spill due to a coal mine dam failure, (2) crude oil and saline produced water spill due to a pipeline leak, and (3) highly saline produced water spill due to a pipeline rupture. In case study 1, an early sign of seepage was detected from a containment pond 6 days prior to the dam failure using an automated endmember detection and abundance estimation method. In case study 2, an early sign of spill was detected more than a year before the spill was reported and time-series surface extent of the spill was quantified based on a simple difference of vegetation indices. In case study 3, spatial-temporal progression of highly saline spill was estimated using moisture indices and a spectral matching technique was used to verify the absence of spill on surface before it was reported. These case studies also utilized Sentinel-2 imagery for better understanding of post-spill remediation process and exemplify how publicly available spaceborne multispectral data might help establish the duration of spill event, reconstruct the spill scenario, and optimize the spill mitigation and prevention control planning.