Monitoring Arctic Ice Movements with Satellite Doppler

Extract

This paper was originally presented at the Second Symposium on Satellite-Doppler Positioning in Austin, Texas in January 1979.

The application of doppler satellite technology to ice-movement studies requiring high-quality positional determination ( ± 1 m) has proved of great value in remote areas of Canada. Potential oil and gas anomalies in the Arctic Islands, hundreds of kilometres from land, can now be successfully monitored with regard to ice-floe movement by remote methods on an almost daily basis. Extensive field tests conducted in the Calgary area during the fall of 1976 showed that daily movements as small as 1 m could be detected with high-quality satellite receivers using rigorous three-dimensional multi-station computer processing methods.