68th Canadian Geotechnical Conference and 7th Canadian Permafrost Conference

EVALUATING THE USE OF DISTRIBUTED TEMPERATURE SENSING FOR PERMAFROST MONITORING IN SALLUIT, NUNAVIK

Session: In Situ Testing, Instrumentation, and Monitoring in Cold Regions / Essais insitu et instrumentation en milieu nordique

Jonathan Roger, Centre d'études nordiques (Canada)
Michel Allard, Centre d'études nordique (CEN) (Canada)
Denis Sarrazin, Centre d'études nordique (CEN) (Canada)
Emmanuel L'Hérault, Centre d'études nordique (CEN) (Canada)
Guy Doré, Centre d'études nordique (CEN) (Canada)
Anick Guimond, Bureau de coordination du Nord-du-Quebec - Ministère des Transport du Québec (Canada)

Fiber optics distributed temperature sensing (DTS) is a new technology. It opens the doors on original approaches to study permafrost temperature regime in a variety of environmental settings and engineering situations. An opportunity presented itself to try this new technology in 2012 as it was decided to rebuild the Salluit road to the community airport. It had been seriously impacted by permafrost degradation. A total length of 3.4 km of DTS cable was buried under the embankment slope, on both sides of the road. The data obtained allowed detection of localised heat sources along its length and gave temperature variations both in time and space since 2012.