SDB Update No. 4 takes us to the high latitudes of Northern Canada, which we have now mapped in 100 m resolution. The longest national coastline worldwide is an impressive showcase for Satellite-Derived Bathymetry (SDB). This post shows the value of SDB for such remote and extensive areas.

The coasts of North Canada are a challenge for traditional surveying

Canada’s coastline measures up to 243,000 km in length! Moreover, the Canadian coastal morphology is incredibly diverse owing to its vast size, glacial history, tectonic activity, and its interactions with multiple oceans including the Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic Oceans. In the Northern part of the coast touching the Arctic Ocean, permafrost, sea ice, fjords, and deltas in low-lying tundra regions dominate the landscape. This also results in shallow lagoons and thousands of islands of various sizes .

Hence, these remote regions with tough environmental conditions and high tidal dynamics were among the last to be charted. You might recall the famous and tragic Franklin’s lost expedition, an attempt to collect ancillary navigation data across the last untraversed sections in the Canadian Arctic.

Mapping North Canada – an opportunity for satellite data

Thus, many of the Canadian Arctic Coastal regions – except for highly frequented navigation channels – are subject to navigation hazards. These include changing shallow water zones, shoals, and rocks.

This concern led to a fascinating use case under the Canadian Ocean Protection Plan: The Canadian Hydrographic Service engaged with indigenous coastal communities to bring more safety to their marine activities. Read about how our SDB data was used by the Inukjuak community for planning and de-risking a mapping project. For even more details on the technologies applied, read this paper in the International Hydrographic Review.

To derive the above mentioned 100-m bathymetry dataset on the entire Canadian Arctic Archipelago, we used optical Copernicus Sentinel-3 imagery. This is helpful for:

⚓ Gaining information on inaccessible locations
🔭 Reconnaissance for more detailed in-situ bathymetric surveys
🌊 Low-effort data collection for dynamic hydrography

Of course, we can also provide SDB products in very high resolution.

Contact

For other purposes, such as coastal engineering and planning we can increase the spatial resolution of SDB grids to sub-metre levels of detail. – Interested?

Please contact shallowwater@eomap.de for SDB services in Canada and worldwide.

SDB update is a Linkedin post series on Satellite-Derived Bathymetry (SDB) by EOMAP – a Fugro company. Enjoy news, facts, and figures on a bi-weekly basis!