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Through a Canadian Hydrographic Service (CHS) contract and with IIC Technologies as Prime Contractor, TCarta facilitated 10m SDB datasets in the waters around Inukjuak and Ulukhaktok, Canada.
Inukjuak is a remote, traditional Inuit community located in Nunavik, Northern Quebec, Canada, with more than 1,500 people bordering the Hudson Bay. The region is influenced by the Southern Arctic conditions and characterized by a cold dry climate with a continuous permafrost. The mean annual temperature is -6ºC; cold conditions persist over long periods during winter (mid-November to March), where temperatures less than -15ºC persist and thaws are infrequent. Hudson Bay usually freezes by the end of December, near the coastline, and ice usually melts in late June or early July.
Ulukhaktok, another Inuit community with fewer than 500 inhabitants, is located on the west coast of Victoria Island, the second largest island in the Canadian Arctic archipelago and the ninth-largest island on Earth. There are prominent cliffs that line the shore, lowlands, and numerous ponds, lakes, and rivers. Seasons are weather and ice dependent. Summer is characterized by open water from early July to September; during fall (October through mid-November) sea ice freeze-up, and winter is characterized by frozen sea conditions. Speed and direction of the wind influence sea ice freeze-up and breakup.
Both communities are only reachable by plane, helicopter or boat. Its economy depends on hunting, fishing, trapping, and gathering; hunters and fishers catch wildlife and fish from the waters and islands of Hudson Bay in Inukjuak and the coastal waters of Prince Albert Sound and Minto Inlet in Ulukhaktok.
Understanding the importance and relevance of surveying all optically shallow water in these regions; TCarta deployed a hydrospatial survey with cutting-edge remote sensing techniques. The negative effects of local water column and atmospheric conditions were controlled using multi-temporal image composites. Sentinel-2 Level-1C imagery was selected, and a minimum of 100 singular atmospherically corrected images were statistically combined. The combination of multi-temporal images allowed to obtain the “best” pixels for SDB derivation.
TCarta successfully delivered 982.8 km² of SDB coverage, 855.2 km² in Inukjuak and 127.6 km² in Ulukhaktok. The efforts for this hydrospatial survey will benefit both communities with up-to-date data. Lastly, TCarta is pleased to announce how the produced SDB accomplished the overlaying goals of filling the gaps in coastal bathymetry, enhancing understanding of the marine environment (especially, the fact that its economy certainly depends on hunting and fishing, and filling data gaps supports such activities), and supporting safe navigation in the Canadian Arctic. This type of project exemplifies the necessity of state-of-the-art SDB technology in remote locations, and the capabilities of hydrospatial solutions.