Canadian Ice Island Drift, Deterioration and Detection database (CI2D3 database)

Ice islands are massive, tabular icebergs which calve from ice shelves and floating glacier tongues. The ability to identify, monitor and predict the drift and deterioration of these immense ice hazards is crucial for mitigating the associated risks to marine navigation and offshore infrastructure in their vicinity. A joint initiative between the Water and Ice Research Lab (Carleton University) and the Canadian Ice Service (Environment Canada) was established in 2014 to extract pertinent information from available satellite imagery and build a geospatial database for future drift and deterioration analyses, remote-sensing detection and modeling calibration and validation. Implementation of the Canadian Ice Island Drift, Deterioration and Detection database (CI2D3; wirl.carleton.ca/CI2D3) is well-underway, starting with the influx of ice islands through eastern Canadian waters after massive calving events at the Petermann Glacier in 2008 and 2010. Thousands of archived RADARSAT-1 and -2 (Canadian Space Agency/MacDonald Dettweiler and Associates) and Envisat (European Space Agency) synthetic aperture radar images are now being exploited to track ice islands until they are too small to delineate (~<0.25 km2). More than four thousand ice island polygons pertaining to the 2008 and 2010 events have so far been delineated in ArcGIS. The relationship between each ice island and its daughter fragments is captured to permit longitudinal studies.