ABSTRACT
Marine
pollution is a serious geoenvironmental problem affecting
the Lebanese coast. It mainly affects the coastal zone adjacent to areas of dense
population. To detect the sources of pollution along this zone, as well as to
identify their characteristics, remote sensing data is used. Landsat 8
Operational Land Imager (OLI) satellite images, which have medium spatial
resolution, are analyzed using ENVI 5.2 and ArcGIS 10.3.1 geospatial software
for the years of 2014 and 2015. Different routines are applied to reveal
anomalous features with the goal being to discriminate polluted water in the
marine environment. Results showed anomalies in Akkar region. This might be due
to the presence of basalts rocks, and geothermal heating, or the pollution of
Oustowan river that flows into the sea. The results also showed that during the
dry season, there is low movement of water causing a least extension of the
anomalies. In contrary, during the wet season, rivers had an intense flow into
the sea which caused an intense water movement and wide extension of anomalies
on the coast. Permanently polluted coastal sites are evident in Tripoli,
Kalamoun, Chekka, Batroun, Amchit, Jbeil, Jounieh, Nahr Beirut and Ouzai with
the most presumed polluted months being in 2014 during April and November and
in 2015 in April. The least extended pollution is during July 2014 and 2015.
The length and width of each anomaly at each site shows that during the year of
2015; most of the anomalies are larger than in 2014.