smartHarbour – Monitoring Eelgrass, Terrestrial Vegetation, Wetlands, and Shoreline Erosion
Client
Canadian Space Agency/ Public Services and Procurement Canada/ Montreal Port Authority
Location
Contrecœur, Quebec; and St. Lawrence River
Project Duration
July 2023 – Ongoing
Background
Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC), the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), and Montreal Port Authority have developed the smartHarbour initiative to develop satellite Earth observation monitoring solutions for the St. Lawrence River as part of the Contrecoeur port terminal expansion. The solutions will contribute to “a follow-up program to verify the accuracy of the environmental assessment and determine the effectiveness of the mitigation measures […] and augment the information collected in the field with additional information obtained by means of Earth observation technologies.”
Services Provided
Hatfield leads a multi-disciplinary team of scientists from the private sector, academia, and a non-government organization to develop terrestrial environmental monitoring applications, including mapping of terrestrial vegetation, wetlands, shoreline delineation and erosion trends, and submerged aquatic vegetation.
Hatfield’s team comprises:
- Ducks Unlimited Canada (DUC) – experts and leaders in wetland conservation.
- Arctus – a private research and development (R&D) company specializing in optical remote sensing of aquatic environments, from lakes to oceans.
- Andrea Bertolo, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières (UQTR) – professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences at UQTR whose research focuses on aquatic vegetation beds, with direct experience along the St. Lawrence River.
- Maycira Costa, University of Victoria (UVic) – professor whose research is focused on methods to make more effective use of remote sensing data for understanding and monitoring biophysical processes in ocean waters and wetlands.
