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Meltwater drainage systems beneath ice sheets are a poorly understood, yet fundamentally important environment for understanding glacier dynamics, which are strongly influenced by the nature and quantity of meltwater entering the subglacial system. Contemporary sub-ice sheet meltwater drainage systems are notoriously difficult to study, but we can utilise exposed beds of palaeo-ice sheets to further our understanding of subglacial drainage. In particular, eskers record deposition in glacial drainage channels and are widespread on the exposed beds of former ice sheets. This paper presents a 1:5,000,000 scale map of >20,000 large eskers (typically > 2 km long) deposited by the Laurentide Ice Sheet (LIS), mapped from Landsat imagery of Canada, in order to establish a dataset suitable for analysis of esker morphometry and drainage patterns at the ice sheet scale. Comparisons between eskers mapped from Landsat imagery and aerial photographs indicate that, in most areas, approximately 75% of eskers are detected using Landsat. The data presented in this map build on and extend previous work in providing a consistent map of an unprecedented sample of eskers for quantitative analysis. It offers an alternative perspective on the problems surrounding ice-sheet meltwater drainage and can be used for: (i) detailed investigations of esker morphometry and distribution from a large sample size; (ii), testing of numerical models of meltwater drainage routing that predict esker characteristics (e.g. channel spacing, sinuosity), (iii) assessment of the factors that control esker location and formation; and (iv), a refined understanding of ice margin configurations during retreat of the LIS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information on biomass distribution is needed to estimate GHG emissions and removals from land use changes in Canada's north for UNFCCC reporting. This paper reports aboveground biomass measurements along the Dempster Highway transect in 2004, and around Yellowknife and the Lupin Gold Mine in 2005. The measured aboveground biomass ranges are 10-100 t ha-1 for woodlands, 1-100 t ha-1 for shrub sites, and 0.5-10 t ha-1 for grass/herbs sites. The root mean squared error (RMSE) of measurements is 21%, and the median absolute percentage error (MedAPE) is 14%. The combination of JERS backscatter and Landsat TM4/TM5 gives the best biomass equation for the Dempster Highway transect, with r 2 = 0.72 when using a one-step approach (i.e. using all points) and 0.78 when using a two-step approach (i.e. stratifying data into three classes: grass, shrub, and woodlands). The two-step approach reduces the MedAPE from 53% to 33%. The validation against Yellowknife & Lupin data indicates that the equations have good transferability. The improvement of two-step approach over the one-step approach, however, is not significant for the validation dataset, suggesting that the one-step approach is as good as the two-step approach when applied over areas outside where the equations are developed. The relationships and error analysis of this study, as well as the final estimate of GHG emission/removal over Canada's north have been incorporated into Canada's 2006 UNFCCC report. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes single-date and multi-date land-cover classification accuracy results using segment-based, gap-filled Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper data compared with Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper data captured one day apart. Maximum likelihood and Decision tree classification algorithms were evaluated. The same training and verification sets of ground data were used for each classification evaluation. For the comparison with the single-date classification, an average decrease of 2.8% in the classification accuracy was obtained with the use of the gap-filled Landsat data. Area estimates for the mid-summer images differed, on average, from 0.6% to 1.9% for a four-class and eight-class classification, respectively. A multi-date land-cover classification was also completed with the addition of a late spring Landsat 5 image, resulting in an average decrease in classification accuracy of 1.8%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past emission of metal-bearing particulate matter, sulphur dioxide (SO2), and sulphuric acid by base metal smelters in the Sudbury region led to widespread loss of vegetation, contamination of soils, and formation of black coatings on rock surfaces. These black coatings formed through the incorporation of smelter-borne particulate matter into the partly dissolved uppermost layers of siliceous minerals on exposed rock, and are characterized by high heavy-metal content. This study involved assessment of the reflectance properties of black coatings in the Sudbury region, and determination of the geographic distribution of coatings through supervised classification of reflectance data derived from a Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) image. Classifications involved the use of the Spectral Angle Mapper (SAM), Maximum Likelihood, and Feedforward Backpropagation Neural Network algorithms. The reflectance spectra of black coatings in the Sudbury region are relatively flat and featureless, and are characterized by reflectance values less than ~13% across the visible, near-infrared, and short-wave infrared. Spectral properties are similar to those of magnetite, a spinel-group mineral known to be present in Sudbury coatings. The presence of carbon-rich soot particles may be an important influence on the reflectance properties of coatings. SAM classification results are characterized by the widespread mislabelling of uncoated urban and open-pit sites as mantled by black coatings, and neural network results problematically mislabel some uncoated wetland sites as coated. Results generated by the Maximum Likelihood algorithm most usefully depict the distribution of exposed black coatings in the Sudbury region. The mapping of black coatings using remote-sensing methods can provide useful information on the spatial character of environmental degradation in the vicinity of smelters, and should be helpful in the monitoring of environmental recovery where emissions have been reduced or eliminated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We recently completed the accuracy assessment of a Landsat-derived landcover polygon layer covering the entire province of Alberta (660,000 km2), Canada, for which we gathered reference information for nearly 5000 randomly selected polygons ranging from two hectares to thousands of hectares in size. This gave us the unique opportunity to quantify, for the first time, how the probability of correctly classifying a landcover object varies with its size. Irrespective of whether they are represented as polygons or as sets of connected pixels with the same label, the classification accuracy of landcover objects decreases as their size decreases, steadily for large and medium sizes, and more dramatically when they are within two orders of magnitude of the pixel size of the input image. We show that this size-dependency is bound to occur whenever the size distribution of landcover objects follows an inverse power law. Our results are consistent with previous studies on related issues, confirm the need to account for size when assessing the accuracy of object-based landcover maps, and cast doubts on the validity of (1) recently proposed object-based accuracy estimators, and (2) landscape pattern analyses where the minimum patch size is close to the pixel size. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present extent of glacier ice on Bylot Island, Arctic Canada, is mapped using high-resolution Landsat 7 ETM+ satellite imagery. The island is 43% ice covered, with 4783 km² of ice. Most ice is centered on the northwest-southeast--trending Byam Martin Mountains, flowing outward as radial valley glaciers and piedmont lobes. The largest glacier is 49 km long and 6.5 km wide. The majority of glaciers terminate on land, but many have margins ending in lakes and two calve into the sea. The late summer snowline, mapped from satellite imagery, is highest along the southern and central parts of the island at about 1050 m, with lower values along the east-northeastern margin of the ice down to about 700 m. These snowline-elevation differences suggest a predominant moisture source from the northeast. Several valley glaciers and piedmont lobes have deformed medial moraines and ice-surface foliation suggesting past surge activity. Ten glaciers are interpreted to be of possible surgetype. The modern extent of glaciers is compared with that of two earlier time intervals. First, we have mapped glacier margins in several areas of Bylot Island from aerial photographs acquired in 1958 and 1961. Secondly, former positions of ice fronts are mapped from moraine systems deposited during the Neoglacial maximum and identified on satellite data. Glaciers have retreated from 0.9 to 1.8 km since the Neoglacial maximum about 120 years ago, with most retreat occurring between 1958/1961 and 2001. Approximately 253 km² or 5% of the 1958/1961 ice-covered area has been lost. Overall, marked glacier retreat has occurred, although a few glaciers, possibly of surge-type, show small readvances. This retreat is consistent with observed climate warming in the Canadian Arctic, especially since the 1960s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]