Author(s): Jan Buermans; David B. Fissel; John R. Marko; Martin Jasek
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Keywords: No Keywords
Abstract: Since first introduced, in 2004, into annual river ice monitoring programs on the Peace River, Shallow Water Ice Profiling Sonar (SWIPS) has been developed for quantitative monitoring and study of ice in river, lake and laboratory environments. This development will be reviewed, beginning with identifications of the environmental features of interest and proceeding to: descriptions of the instrument; deployment and operating principles; and output products. A key step in this advancement was the recognition of capabilities for detection of suspended frazil ice which, in combination with known capacities for draft and other measurements on floating surface ice, raised prospects for reasonably complete quantitative tracking of all components of river and lake ice systems. An overview is provided on the effective extraction of information for different components of the ice environment. The selection and use of different acoustic frequencies in the SWIP is discussed and shown to be an important tool for extracting optimal information on river ice processes. For frazil ice pans and for the seasonal ice cover and its usual layer of slush ice, precision in establishing the location of ice/water boundaries increases with the acoustic frequency. On the other hand, the actual acoustic penetration of the ice cover, and, hence, possibilities for characterizing the underside of the ice cover, especially slush ice, become more effective with the use of lower acoustic frequencies. This topic is being addressed through ongoing analysis and research.
Year: 2010