Grant: Research Tools and Instruments

We are requesting funding to purchase an interoperable geographic and topographic survey system. The requested system contains a real time kinematic (RTK) global navigation satellite system (GNSS), a robotic imaging total station and the necessary accessories and software. The GNSS will supply fast, accurate and future-proof (able to track current and soon to be available satellites) real-time global positioning without the need for post-processing. It will be used to map landforms, locate samples, build digital elevation models, topographically correct geophysical surveys and track glacier motion. The robotic imaging total station will enable efficient capture of 3D positional data and will allow one-person operation. It will be used to build digital terrain models and topographically correct geophysical surveys. The interoperability of the GNSS and the total station will ensure seamless, geographic and topographic data collection even under dense tree canopy. The requested equipment is essential to support the co-applicants' on-going, NSERC-funded research programs in paleoglaciology, glaciology and archeological science. Together these research programs contribute to better understanding the interaction of climate change with glacier dynamics and human migration. The equipment would support research that will lead to improvements in ice sheet models, more accurate projections of regional glacier change, and better understanding of the linkages between human migration and paleoclimate. The associated research outcomes relate to our fundamental understanding of the cryosphere, while touching on applied problems in hydropower production, freshwater ecosystems, and cryospheric natural hazards. Timely access to the requested infrastructure will support research that facilitates more cost effective aggregate and groundwater exploration and more defensible resource development in the vulnerable environment of Canada's North. Current equipment at SFU is obsolete and failed in summer 2016. Progress in the co-applicants' programs is dependent on access to the requested state-of-the-art equipment. 3 PhD students' progress is currently stalled awaiting access to this equipment and many additional current and future HQP (3 PhD, 7 MSc, numerous BSc) would require use of the requested equipment within our NSERC-funded programs. In addition to providing data for these students' thesis projects, the requested equipment will provide hands-on training on equipment that are standard tools within the disciplines of geomorphology, glaciology and archaeology, and in industries where trainees are likely to find employment such as environmental and archeological consulting, Provincial, Territorial and National Surveys, land and water management agencies, and mineral and aggregate exploration.