OCEAN CLASSIFICATION OF DYNAMICAL STRUCTURES DETECTED BY SAR AND SPECTRAL METHODS J.M. Redondo 1 , J.J. Martinez-Benjamin 1 , J.D. Tellez 1 , J.Jorge 1 , M. Diez 2 , and E. Sekula 2 1 UPC Barcelona Tech. B5 Campus Nord, 09034 Barcelona, Spain 2 Ports de la Generalitat, 08800 Vilanova i la Geltru, Spain ABSTRACT We discuss a taxonomy of different dynamical features in the ocean surface and provide some eddy and front statistics, as well as describing some events detected by several satellites and even with additional cruise obser- vations and measurements, in the North-west Mediter- ranean Sea area between 1996 and 2012. The structure of the flows are presented using self-similar traces that may be used to parametrize mixing at both limits of the Rossby Deformation Radius scale, RL. Results show the ability to identify different SAR signatures and at the same time provide calibrations for the different local con- figurations of vortices, spirals, Langmuir cells, oil spills and tensioactive slicks that eventually allow the study of the self-similar structure of the turbulence. Depending on the surface wind and wave level, and also on the fetch. the bathimetry, the spiral parameters and the resolution of vortical features change. Previous descriptions did not in- clude the new wind and buoyancy features. SAR images also show the turbulence structure of the coastal area and the Regions of Fresh Water Influence (ROFI). It is note- worthy tt such complex coastal field-dependent behavior is strongly influenced by stratification and rotation of the turbulence spectrum is observed only in the range smaller than the local Rossby deformation radius, RL. The mea- sures of diffusivity from buoy or tracer experiments are used to calibrate the behavior of different tracers and pol- lutants, both natural and man-made in the NW Mediter- ranean Sea. Thanks to different polarization and inten- sity levels in ASAR satellite imagery, these can be used to distinguish between natural and man-made sea surface features due to their distinct self-similar and fractal as a function of spill and slick parameters, environmental con- ditions and history of both oil releases and weather condi- tions. Eddy diffusivity map derived from SAR measure- ments of the ocean surface, performing a feature spatial correlation of the available images of the region are pre- sented. Both the multi fractal discrimination of the local features and the diffusivity measurements are important to evaluate the state of the environment. The distribution of meso-scale vortices of size, the Rossby deformation scale and other dominant features can be used to distin- guish features in the ocean surface. Multi-fractal analysis is then very usefull. The SAR images exhibited a large variation of natural features produced by winds, internal waves, the bathymetric distribution, by convection, rain, etc as all of these produce variations in the sea surface roughness so that the topological changes may be stud- ied and classified. In a similar way bathimetry may be studied with the methodology described here using the coastline and the thalwegs as generators of local vertical vorticity. Key words: SAR analysis; Vortex Statistics; Oil slicks; Ocean Turbulence; Fractal Spectra; Diffusion. 1. INTRODUCTION Digital analysis of video images recorded after the re- lease of dye patches in the ocean surface (Bezerra et al. 1998) has been used to investigate the structure of the surf-zone and its turbulent mixing. This technique of di- rectly measuring the area spread of a marker allows to study both, the internal structure of the dye blobs and to quantify the 2D dispersion coefficients. Experimental re- sults on temporal and spatial evolution of these coeffi- cients in the nearshore zone, and also on board several cruises (Martinez-Benjamin et al. 1998), (Redondo and Platonov 2009) under different low energy conditions are presented as a possible interactive calibration of satellite images (Redondo et al. 2008a,b). We used a novel tech- niques to study turbulent diffusion by means of digital processing of images taken from remote sensing and also of video recordings of the sea surface. The use of image analysis allows to measure variations of several decades in horizontal local diffusivity values using directly Ein- stein’s equation. (Bezerra et al 1998) found that near the coast there is a power law increase of diffusivity with wave height but only for large wave Wave Reynolds num- bers. Other important factors are wind speed and tidal currents. A method for evaluating mesoscale eddy diffusivities in the ocean from the measured distribution of integral length scales and the eddy turnover times associated to inertial oscillations associated to the local Coriolis pa- rameter f (y) are also discussed here, because of the im- portance of vertical vorticity i the ocean surface. Us-