Satellite Imaging
Natural Colour
False Colour
The map above is a set of sychronized images captured over an area which experienced a "release", or pipeline break. To find out more, read below.
Here's a question for you:
... in the above scene, when did the pipeline fail? Because fail it did, and it turns out that the timing of the failure was of significance to many concerned parties. One of the advantages of satellite imagery is that there is repository of archived imagery available at different resolutions both spectrally and spatially speaking. What does this mean? Well, let's not get lost in that important, yet involved question right at this moment. Let's go back to the original question: When did the pipeline fail? In the pursuit of an answer to this question, aspects of spatial and spectral resolution will be revealed.
First of all, how do we know that the pipeline failed?
How do we know that the pipeline failed? Well, there was a optical recognition of the event in fall of 2018. Optical recognition? Well, someone saw a pool of nasty produced water sloshing around the field in early September 2018. Produced water is a by-product of oil and gas production, a by-product which is quite saline and harmful to vegetation. Alberta, Canada, where this break occurred, has rigorous environmental protocols which require that the affected area be mapped and rectified as fast as possible. To achieve these ends, clients (more often than not, the pipeline owner) will employ an electromagnetic (EM) study to map out the region of impacted soils, as produced water, being saline, is especially conductive (in terms of soil conductivity) therefore EM surveys are excellent methods for mapping regions impacted by saline solutions. You may activate the EM results in the above map by opening the layers tab. The scale of the EM plot is such that "red" is elevated regions of conductivity, whereas the greens/blues are representative of "normal" or background levels.
Now that we know there was a break, when did it occur?
Here's the thing: this particular incident, while not a large break, still requires a large out lay of cash to remedy. In this case the pipeline operation was insured, meaning that if it could be demonstrated that the timing of the break was within a certain period of time, i.e. after a regularly scheduled visual inspection, then the insurance company would be responsible for clean-up fees, otherwise it would fall to the pipeline owner. Again, we are talking about a few hundreds of thousands of dollars. So when did this thing break?
Well, about that, what we are going to tell you is that the False Colour image employs the near-infrared band in place of the red band, and secondly, there was a major rainfall mid-July 2018.
If you would like paper which pinpoints the date which the break was reduced to, as well as an explanation as to how that date was determined email here: When did that break occur?