2003 Gulf of St. Lawrence SAR Validation Field Program

The objective of this Polarimetric SAR Field Validation project was to collect ground "truth" data on selected features from the ENVISAT and CV-580 Polarimetric SAR as close to real time after the data acquisition as possible. The project was conducted from February 27th through March 7th, 2003 with this being the first year of a potentially multi-year validation effort. This project was made possible by funding received from the Government Related Initiatives Program (GRIP). Field activities were based out of Charlottetown and involved 6 field personnel from five agencies. The two principal data types collected during the project were remotely sensed and surface/helicopter sampling data. Remotely sensed data was acquired in real time on board the CV-580 aircraft while other satellite data sets were accumulated at the Canadian Ice Service (CIS) through their data acquisition infrastructure. Some of these satellite data were transferred to the field personnel on a best effort basis and used in their site/feature validation studies. Surface and helicopter sampling was conducted at each of the sites visited during the helicopter sampling was conducted at each of the sites visited during the helicopter surveys on March 1st, 2nd and 6th.