This paper provides a comprehensive review of the use of Synthetic Aperture Radar images (SAR) for detection of illegal discharges from ships. It summarizes the current state of the art, covering operational and research aspects of the application. Oil spills are seriously affecting the marine ecosystem and cause political and scientific concern since they seriously effect fragile marine and coastal ecosystem. The amount of pollutant discharges and associated effects on the marine environment are important parameters in evaluating sea water quality. Satellite images can improve the possibilities for the detection of oil spills as they cover large areas and offer an economical and easier way of continuous coast areas patrolling. SAR images have been widely used for oil spill detection. The present paper gives an overview of the methodologies used to detect oil spills on the radar images. In particular we concentrate on the use of the manual and automatic approaches to distinguish oil spills from other natural phenomena. We discuss the most common techniques to detect dark formations on the SAR images, the features which are extracted from the detected dark formations and the most used classifiers. Finally we conclude with discussion of suggestions for further research. The references throughout the review can serve as starting point for more intensive studies on the subject.

Seagrasses are traversing the epoch of intense anthropogenic impacts that significantly decrease their coverage and invaluable ecosystem services, necessitating accurate and adaptable, global-scale mapping and monitoring solutions. Here, we combine the cloud computing power of Google Earth Engine with the freely available Copernicus Sentinel-2 multispectral image archive, image composition, and machine learning approaches to develop a methodological workflow for large-scale, high spatiotemporal mapping and monitoring of seagrass habitats. The present workflow can be easily tuned to space, time and data input; here, we show its potential, mapping 2510.1 km² of P. oceanica seagrasses in an area of 40,951 km² between 0 and 40 m of depth in the Aegean and Ionian Seas (Greek territorial waters) after applying support vector machines to a composite of 1045 Sentinel-2 tiles at 10-m resolution. The overall accuracy of P. oceanica seagrass habitats features an overall accuracy of 72% following validation by an independent field data set to reduce bias. We envision that the introduced flexible, time- and cost-efficient cloud-based chain will provide the crucial seasonal to interannual baseline mapping and monitoring of seagrass ecosystems in global scale, resolving gain and loss trends and assisting coastal conservation, management planning, and ultimately climate change mitigation.

Sustained observations are required to determine the marine plastic debris mass balance and to support effective policy for planning remedial action. However, observations currently remain scarce at the global scale. A satellite remote sensing system could make a substantial contribution to tackling this problem. Here, we make initial steps towards the potential design of such a remote sensing system by: (1) identifying the properties of marine plastic debris amenable to remote sensing methods and (2) highlighting the oceanic processes relevant to scientific questions about marine plastic debris. Remote sensing approaches are reviewed and matched to the optical properties of marine plastic debris and the relevant spatio-temporal scales of observation to identify challenges and opportunities in the field. Finally, steps needed to develop marine plastic debris detection by remote sensing platforms are proposed in terms of fundamental science as well as linkages to ongoing planning for satellite systems with similar observation requirements.