NWT RESEARCH DATABASE

Regions: Inuvialuit Settlement Region, Gwich'in Settlement Area, Sahtu Settlement Area, Dehcho Region, North Slave Region, South Slave Region

Tags: physical sciences, permafrost, air quality, remote sensing, LiDAR survey, aerial photography, dust monitoring, spectrometry

Objective(s): To encompass the variability in the key types of ecosystems that are both unique to arctic and boreal regions in North America as well as being representative of the larger Northern High Latitude region and collect water and leaf samples to provide “ground truth” references for airborne and satellite imagery.

Project Description: This licence has been issued for the scientific research application No.5304. The extended ABoVE Study Area includes most of northwestern North America west of Hudson Bay and north and east of the coastal mountain ranges. It encompasses the variability in the key types of ecosystems that are both unique to arctic and boreal regions in North America as well as being representative of the larger Northern High Latitude region. ABoVE airborne teams collected data across a wide variety of ecosystems in both the United States (US) and Canada. The research tem will fly two of the sensors. At selected locations field teams will collect water and leaf samples to provide “ground truth” references for airborne and satellite imagery. Aircraft with sensors: The NASA Gulfstream-III aircraft with an L-band radar instrument and the Dynamic Aviation King Air B-200 aircraft with a hyperspectral (AVIRIS-NG) instrument will re-fly lines in the ABoVE study area, along with a few new flight paths over specific areas of interest. The flight teams will be based out of Inuvik, Yellowknife, Churchill, and Fairbanks airfields. Both aircrafts fly at an altitude between 5 – 15 km. We hope to fly the AVIRIS-NG instrument between July 6 – August 31, 2022, and the L-band SAR between August 1 – 31, 2022. Overall flight coordination will be completed as required through official channels with the US Federal Aviation Administration and Transport Canada. These instruments have been cleared by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) internal safety reviews, and the US Federal Communications Commission has given authority to operate, and similarly in Canada, the Ministry of Industry has approved their operating parameters for the radar system. The instruments will not leave behind any footprint of its use. All sensor systems are fully integrated into the aircraft and no sensor will be deployed outside the aircraft. This remote sensing instrument has been used around the world on various other NASA projects with no environmental impacts ever reported. Field sampling: There are two teams who will work to collect samples at ground and water locations underneath the flight paths. These teams will attempt to match their sampling to within a few days of the flights. Briefly, one team will use a boat to collect approximately 50 surface water samples (up to 5 L each) along the East Channel, the Middle Channel in the Middle Delta of the Mackenzie River close to Inuvik. This team will use the boat and field assistants from the Aurora Research Institute. The other team will be collecting leaves (approximately 60 grams per site) and ground-level photographs of sampling locations at specific sites in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Yukon, Nunavut, and Northwest Territories. In the NWT, they will be collecting samples near: Lutsel K'e/Thaidene Nene NP, Yellowknife, Behchoko, Jean Marie River, and Fort Simpson. While the flight crews are based in Inuvik and Yellowknife, they will host an open house at the fixed base operator airfield for people to meet the flight crew and scientists. While the water sampling team is in Inuvik, they will work with Aurora Research Institute to schedule a time for a community engagement session about the water sampling work and how it connects to the airborne data. While foliar sampling team is in the NWT, they will work with Lutsel K'e/Thaidene Nene National Park and the Government of theNorthwest Territories to schedule community engagement sessions about the foliar sampling work and how it connects to the airborne data. Both the foliar and water research groups will commit to giving a webinar about the results from their work via our NWT webinar series, co-hosted with the GNWT Knowledge Agenda, as well as other engagement activities as appropriate through the Aurora Research Institute. The complete processing of the airborne data and incorporation into scientific understanding will take a bit longer, especially since researchers would like to compare across acquisition years 2017 - 2022. The research team anticipating having more webinars when results from these syntheses are available. The fieldwork for this study will be conducted from July 25, 2022 to August 31, 2022