Remote sensing for marine oil spill detection, mapping, and monitoring: A systematic review and bibliometric analysis
Abstract
Oil pollution is one of the most persistent and harmful anthropogenic pressures on global marine and coastal ecosystems. Accidental discharges, chronic leaks, operational spills from shipping, offshore drilling, and industrial activities release millions of tons of hydrocarbons annually, threatening marine biodiversity, fisheries, and coastal livelihoods. Remote sensing has become the primary technology for oil spill detection, mapping, and monitoring, offering synoptic, repeatable, and objective coverage of extensive marine areas. This paper presents a systematic review of remote sensing for oil spill detection, mapping, and monitoring, grounded in a bibliometric analysis of 2856 verified documents authored by 6473 researchers, retrieved from five major academic databases (OpenAlex, CrossRef, EuropePMC, SemanticScholar, and CORE), spanning the period 2000 to 2026. Annual publication output grew from 16 documents in 2000 to a peak of 244 in 2025, reflecting a 15-fold growth driven by the Deepwater Horizon disaster (2010), the launch of Sentinel-1 (2014-2016), and the proliferation of deep learning frameworks. The review examines the physical principles of oil detection across the electromagnetic spectrum; compares radar, optical, hyperspectral, and thermal sensor platforms; and evaluates developments in artificial intelligence (AI) and data fusion methods for automated detection. Validation protocols, regional case studies from the Gulf of Mexico, North Sea, Mediterranean,…
How strong is the evidence?
Evidence Hub reads this as a systematic review. Its evidence level is 1 of 5 (Highest · pooled evidence). Pooled evidence from several studies sits at the top of the evidence pyramid.
Read the paper
Related studies
- Preliminary Toxicity Analysis of 3DCRT versus IMRT on the High Dose Arm of the RTOG 0126 Prostate Cancer Trial
- Adaptive Radiotherapy for Head and Neck Cancer: Initial Clinical Outcomes from a Prospective Trial
- American Association of Physicists in Medicine Task Group 263: Standardizing Nomenclatures in Radiation Oncology
- Motion Management Strategies and Technical Issues Associated with Stereotactic Body Radiotherapy of Thoracic and Upper Abdominal Tumors: A Review from NRG Oncology
- High-dose-rate interstitial brachytherapy as a monotherapy for localized prostate cancer: treatment description and preliminary results of a phase I/II clinical trial
- Highly efficient training, refinement, and validation of a knowledge-based plan quality control system for radiotherapy clinical trials
Go deeper in Evidence Hub
Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.