Hydrocarbon production from the Cardium Formation of the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin peaked in the 1970’s. However, in recent years multistage hydrological fractured horizontal wells have unlocked large volumes of oil from low porosity permeability thin-bedded sandstones, laminated shales, and the bioturbated muddy sandstones. However, the geometry of the induced fractures is poorly understood. The […]

The agriculture sector is one of the major pillars in the Canadian economy based in cereal, pastureland for cattle, and biofuel (wheat, canola and barley), and was estimated to be a $7 billion industry in 2015 in Alberta. It is also one of the most economically risky activities since the value of the yield is […]

Balch Exploration Consulting Inc. (BECI) develops low cost geophysical survey solutions to the natural resources sector. They are investing in the development of a rotary-wing unmanned aircraft system (UAS) with a new high-precision fluxgate magnetometer. The general objective of this internship is to develop a rotary-wing UAS for aeromagnetic surveying. Specific objectives are to: assemble […]

This project aims to operationalize innovative methods for developing cost effective wetland inventories across Alberta by use of numerous sources of remote sensing data, namely light detection and ranging (LiDAR), synthetic aperture Radar (SAR), and optical imagery. The project will formalize a mapping specification, develop training and validation datasets (available in-kind from the academic supervisor […]

The proposed study will examine the volcanological, mineralogical and geochemical evolution of the felsic volcanic complex hosting Horne deposit in a comparative study with the surrounding felsic volcanic centres in the Rouyn-Noranda region of Quebec. Volcanic and intrusive facies, alteration phases and mineralization styles will be described for each centre. Mineralization will be further examined […]

Prior doing any type of construction that causes soil disturbance (digging, trenching, etc.), it is imperative to acknowledge which infrastructures such as water ducts, sewerage, electricity cables are buried. The GPR approach is recognized as performing to obtain the location and depth of underground objects but it shows some drawbacks. The proposal is to improve […]

The proposed research project will take place on three nature reserves owned by the Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) (Miscou, NB – 780 acres, Escuminac, NB – 630 acres, Salmonier, NL – 440 acres), where NCC wants to understand how the land is being used by the community, the motivation and beliefs of those using […]

Over the past 25 years researchers at the UBC Geophysical Inversion Facility (GIF) have generated forward modelling and inversion codes that deal with most types of data of interest to a consortium of mining companies. This proposal moves the research to applications in their corporate environments, and to advance the tools and understanding about how […]

One of the major issues facing potash mining in Saskatchewan is the potential for water to enter the mine from water-bearing rocks above mining operations. Rocks near-mine are normally considered dry and low risk. However, under some conditions, in localized areas, there is the potential for unsaturated water to have been introduced into the rock […]

Sudbury represents the site of a meteorite impact structure originally greater than 200 km in diameter and that formed 1.85 billion years ago. Despite the proven and potential economic benefits of resource development at Sudbury, there are still major outstanding questions concerning our understanding of the structure and its ore deposits. A series of objectives […]

Copper and palladium (Cu-Pd) mineralization at the Marathon Deposit are associated with gabbro rocks. It is fundamentally important to be able to distinguish among the different types of gabbros, because only those of the Marathon Series are host to mineralization. This is accomplished through logging drill core, whole rock geochemistry and mineralogy. Mineralization at the […]

The efficient monitoring of soil and crop parameters is essential for crop stress evaluation and yield forecast in agriculture, yet most remote sensing studies focus on regional-scale soil and crop parameters estimation using satellite data. Satellite remote sensing is difficult to obtain both high spatial and temporal resolution data with a low-cost in field-scale. Currently, […]