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POAC

Ice draft and ice type derived from RADARSAT-2 satellite imagery and calibrated using Ice Profiling Sonar (IPS).

Sea and Ice Analysis for a Potential Mackenzie Delta Ship Terminal


Sea and Ice Analysis for a Potential Mackenzie Delta Ship Terminal
ASL’s remote sensing team aided in a pre-feasibility study for the Government of the Northwest Territories to support a potential natural gas export project situated in the Mackenzie Delta. To evaluate the viability of year-round shipping, the team provided the following key analyses:

Project services included :

  • Historical Sea Ice Trends: Leveraged weekly digital ice chart data from the Canadian Ice Service (CIS) archives (1991-2020) to map the percent change in average sea ice concentration over the past three decades.
  • Ice Development Mapping: Mapped decadal changes in mean monthly sea ice state development to identify concentrations of medium-to-thick first-year ice and old ice.
  • Future Route Projections: Evaluated a proposed shipping corridor to the Bering Sea by forecasting seasonal sea ice conditions and shipping impacts for the periods of 2030–2045 and 2046–2060.


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Biofilm

Ice draft and ice type derived from RADARSAT-2 satellite imagery and calibrated using Ice Profiling Sonar (IPS).

CHOIRS Characterization of Hazardous Ocean Ice using RADARSAT and Ice Profiling Sonar

CHOIRS was a Canadian Space Agency sponsored project designed to take advantage of complementary technologies for the assessment of sea ice. The work was undertaken by ASL with contributions from the Canadian Ice Service, the National Research Council, and University of British Columbia.

ASL has a long history of providing accurate measurements of sea ice draft using its moored, upward-looking sonar (ULS) instrumentation, as well as recognized expertise in the field of remote sensing. The CHOIRS project offered an opportunity to marry these two technologies to provide a comprehensive view of sea ice, “from below” using sonar and “from above” using satellite.
Project services included:

  • Methods development to utilize the complementary data sources of satellite SAR and ULS
  • Assessment of RADARSAT-based techniques for sea ice characterization, using ULS as validation data
  • Development of improved RADARSAT-based techniques to enhance hazardous ice characterization, and
  • Demonstration of the application and its extension to future SAR missions – in particular, RCM compact polarimetry.

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