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The Governement of Canada is committed to helping the Arctic realize its potential as a healthy and prosperous region within a strong and sovereign country. Today, Northerners can benefit from Canadian space technologies to obtain more control on their land and waterways.

In April 2008 around Ellesmere Island, the Canadian Artic Rangers, which are aboriginal reservists from communities in Nunavut and the Northwest Territories, found an 18-kilometre crack along the shelf. Satellite imagery has since been acquired to show the ice-break. On July 26, the Canadian earth observation satellite RADARSAT-1 detected two new fractures of 4 km² and 14 km² chunk of ice from the largest remaining ice shelf in the Arctic, the Ward Hunt Island Shelf.

For more information, please visit:
ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/App/WsvPageDsp.cfm?Lang=eng&lnid=41&ScndLvl=no&ID=11895.

For more information on the status of Hurricane Dean or other tropical storms or hurricanes, please visit: http://www.atl.ec.gc.ca/weather/hurricane/index_e.html.

To order these or any other RADARSAT-1 image, please visit: www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/satellites/radarsat1/order_data.asp.

On June 6, B.C.'s Provincial Emergency Coordination Centre reported that high water levels and flooding may continue for two to three weeks, until sufficient runoff of the spring snowmelt has occurred so river levels drop.

As of June 7, flooding had occurred in Prince George, Quesnel, and other locations along the Upper Fraser River, in unprotected sections of the Skeena valley, near Terrace, and in other communities along the Skeena. Flooding may continue along the Bulkley valley through Smithers, as well as in other affected communities. Flooding is anticipated in unprotected sections of the Nass valley.

Local states of emergency have been declared in Prince George, the town of Smithers, Bulkley-Nechacko Regional District (RD), the Kitimat-Stikine RD and the Squamish-Lillooet RD.

For more information, see the bulletin DOB07-109, and bulletin DOB07-110.

(Flood interpretation provided by the Canada Centre for Remote Sensing)

During the last week of December 2006 offshore winds combined with very warm temperatures led to more fractures in the surrounding sea ice. This image shows how far the 66-square-kilometre ice island has drifted. If it were to make its way through the fast ice to open water (left of image), it could become a problem for oil platforms and shipping.

For more information, please refer to the Canadian Ice Service's in-depth coverage of the calving of the Ayles Ice Shelf.

The Ward Hunt Ice Shelf is the largest ice shelf in the Arctic, located on the north coast of Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada. It is 443 square kilometers in size, and has been in place for approximately 3,000 years.

The Ward Hunt Ice Shelf had dammed an epishelf lake, a body of freshwater that floats on denser ocean water. This epishelf lake, located in Disraeli Fiord, was host to a rare ecosystem, and it was the largest and best-understood epishelf lake in the Northern Hemisphere. In April 2000, RADARSAT-1 imagery revealed that a large crack in the ice began to form, and in 2003, it was announced that the ice sheet had split completely in two. When the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf fractured, the epishelf lake suddenly drained out of Disraeli Fiord, spilling more than 3 billion cubic meters of fresh water into the Arctic Ocean.

The crack in the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf was first observed during field work done by the Laval University in Quebec city in 2002 and was later confirmed and better documented using new and archived RADARSAT-1 imagery.

Because glaciers do not feed the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, its existence depends on snow and ice accumulation on top and freshwater freezing on the bottom. The most likely source of freshwater freezing was water flowing out of Disraeli Fiord and with the lake gone and it is likely that the ice shelf will start to thin, or thin at a faster rate.

It is broadly accepted that if global change is occurring, the effects will be felt first and amplified in the Polar Regions, particularly the Arctic. RADARSAT-1 imagery helped to understand the magnitude of change in the area.

Usually, calm open water shows as a dark surface in a radar image. In an urban context, however, image interpretation is more complex. The microwaves are first reflected by the water, then by the vertical surfaces of buildings and structures, then back to the radar sensor on the satellite. This phenomena, known as the corner reflector effect, gives a very bright or light tone to some areas of the image. These, like all radar images, can be processed or filtered to highlight specific features of interest to the user.

To order this image or other RADARSAT-1 images, please visit: www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/satellites/radarsat1/order_data.asp

For more information on the status of Hurricane Katrina or other tropical storms or hurricanes, please visit: www.atl.ec.gc.ca/weather/hurricane/index_e.html

This image was acquired and processed by CSTARS (Miami) in partnership with the Canadian Space Agency Hurricane Watch program.

To order this image or other RADARSAT-1 images, please visit: www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/satellites/radarsat1/order_data.asp

For more information on the status of Hurricane Katrina or other tropical storms or hurricanes, please visit: www.atl.ec.gc.ca/weather/hurricane/index_e.html

This image was acquired and processed by CSTARS (Miami) in partnership with the Canadian Space Agency Hurricane Watch program.

To order this image or other RADARSAT-1 images, please visit:
www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/satellites/radarsat1/order_data.asp

To order the RADARSAT-1 image, please visit:
www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/satellites/radarsat1/order_data.asp

Several of the images requested could not be provided because of cloud cover. But one image from the satellite NigeriaSat-1, operated by the consortium DMCii, shows the area of interest on April 22 around 10:30 a.m. Newfoundland time. The false-colour image shows the area around Fogo Island, where several darker spots in the ice pack indicate the positions of ice-bound vessels.

Two images of the same area were generated by advanced synthetic aperture radar (ASAR). The first ASAR image from JAXA's ALOS satellite clearly delineates the three visible surfaces: land, the ice pack, and open water. Just above the centre of the image are two shiny spots surrounded by ice, which are probably two boats. This ALOS image was acquired just before 11:30 p.m. local time on April 22, and each pixel of the image represents a 12.5-metre square on the earth's surface.

The second ASAR image was taken by Canada's own RADARSAT-1 in ScanSAR mode (scanning synthetic aperture radar), with a wide beam that generates 100-metre pixels, resulting in a grainy image. The RADARSAT-1 image was acquired on April 22 at about 6:45 p.m. local time. The magnified insert reveals several shiny objects, possibly vessels imprisoned in the ice.

To order this image or other RADARSAT-1 images, please visit:
www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/satellites/radarsat1/order_data.asp

These mountain ranges are separated by the Mackenzie River— the dark feature cutting across the middle of the image. This 1,800-km long river, averaging 1.6 kilometres wide (in places it is 6 kilometres wide), and 8 to 9 metres deep, drains a huge basin of 1.8 million square kilometres. The river is an important transportation route during the short summer shipping season and it is used as a road when it freezes over in winter.

To order this image or other RADARSAT-1 images, please visit:
www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/satellites/radarsat1/order_data.asp

To order this or any other RADARSAT-1 image, please visit:
www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/satellites/radarsat1/order_data.asp

Tropical storm Jeanne caused serious flooding in Haiti on September 17, 2004. Over 1,500 people died and 250,000 were left homeless.

Satellite images are an indispensable resource in managing the crisis response and coordinating humanitarian aid in the region. They provide information on areas that are difficult to access and give an overview of the entire area affected. Canada's RADARSAT-1 has once again contributed timely information to emergency response personnel.

These images were acquired under the International Charter on Space and Major Disasters. They show the difference between the current flood and that of June 1999, which affected the same area. The city of Gonaïves and surrounding region were affected most by this natural disaster. Documents produced for the United Nations, including RADARSAT-1 and other satellite images, are available on the UNOSAT Web site.

To order this or any other RADARSAT-1 image, please visit:
www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/satellites/radarsat1/order_data.asp

Recently, significant rainfall caused landslides and resulted in the deaths of thousands of people and destroyed many infrastructures in Haiti and Dominican Republic. Some of the worst flooding occurred in and around the town of Jimani, shown here. The radar images above show the affected area before and during the flood. 

The radar signal of Canada's RADARSAT-1 satellite, with its ability to capture images through cloud cover, was used to acquire images of the flooded areas. These images were captured for the International Charter on Space and Major Disasters. The Charter gathers the satellite resources from six international partners, of which the Canadian Space Agency is one. For more details, visit www.disasterscharter.org.

In RADARSAT-1 images, the center of a hurricane (the eye) appears darker because the wind speed is lower than in the surrounding area. This image was acquired and processed by CSTARS (Miami) in partnership with the Canadian Space Agency Hurricane Watch program.

To order this RADARSAT-1 image, please visit:
www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/satellites/radarsat1/order_data.asp

This image was acquired and processed by CSTARS (Miami) in partnership with the CSA Hurricane Watch program.

To order this or any other RADARSAT-1 image, please visit:
www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/satellites/radarsat1/order_data.asp

The two pieces of the wreck are drifting apart and are clearly seen in the second high-resolution mode image (63 centimetres) taken by DigitalGlobe's Quickbird satellite.  

Although Quickbird offers a higher resolution, it cannot take images in the dark, as RADARSAT-1 does. In winter, daylight hours in the Arctic are limited, so radar data are essential for monitoring the ship and its oil spill. This situation shows the advantage of having multiple images generated by various remote sensing satellites.

To order the RADARSAT-1 image, please visit:
www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/satellites/radarsat1/order_data.asp

To order this image or other RADARSAT-1 images, please visit:
www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/satellites/radarsat1/order_data.asp

These images were acquired and processed by CSTARS (Miami) in partnership with the CSA Hurricane Watch program.

To order this or any other RADARSAT-1 image, please visit:
www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/satellites/radarsat1/order_data.asp

To order this image or other RADARSAT-1 images, please visit www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/satellites/radarsat1/order_data.asp

On May 18, 1980, an earthquake caused a landslide collapsing the northern part of the volcano (visible in the centre of the image). There was an eruption that projected ashes up to 19 km high and created devastation for about 180 square kilometres around; 57 people were killed. So much of the mountain was lost in this activity that it decreased in height from 2,950 to 2,550 metres above sea level.

To order this image or other RADARSAT-1 images, please visit www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/satellites/radarsat1/order_data.asp

The areas hardest hit by the storm, Punta Gorda, Port Charlotte and Captiva Island, as well as Tampa, St. Petersburg and Clearwater are visible on the right side of the image.

CSA sponsors a Hurricane Watch program with the Canadian Hurricane Centre, Department of Fisheries and Oceans, NOAA and CSTARS (Center for Southeastern Tropical Advanced Remote Sensing) as partners. This data was acquired and processed by CSTARS. The accompanying wind field image was generated from the RADARSAT-1 data and provided by CSTARS.

To order this or any other RADARSAT-1 image, please visit:
www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/satellites/radarsat1/order_data.asp

To order this RADARSAT-1 image, please visit:
www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/satellites/radarsat1/order_data.asp