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.

ASL Ice Studies

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