Galveston Bay experiences daily traffic from ships and tankers arriving from the Gulf of America. This region is at high risk for oil spills, and much of the spilled oil accumulates along the ocean surface as slicks. Several physical, biological, and chemical processes influence the fate and transport of these slicks across the bay. The local ocean currents and wave action play a central role in such processes. In this work, we demonstrate the use of remote sensing techniques to measure the near-surface ocean currents from unmanned aerial system [UAS) video by analyzing the Doppler-shifted surface gravity waves. This workflow is implemented based on three-dimensional fast Fourier transform of UAS video using a convenient MATLAB-based package called CopterCurrents (Streßer et al., 2017). The resulting near-surface current maps can be generated over various spatial extents and geometric footprints. These maps are produced for key locations in and around the bay, including the vicinity of the Houston ship channel, the Galveston Bay entrance channel, and the coastal waters of Galveston Island facing the Gulf of America.

These large scale, high resolution near-surface current maps can then be used to either improve transport predictions or to help select ocean circulation models that best predict the local hydrodynamics. Quantitative comparisons of the remotely sensed field data with the Northern Gulf of America Operational Forecast System [NGOFS2) will be presented. Additionally, visualizations of the field measurements along with the error metrics will be provided using the Environmental Response Management Application (ERMA) interface.