Ice & Snow Measurement

Ice and snow thickness measurements are routinely measured with Mala GPR systems. Ice roads are an essential mode of transportation in northern regions to support mining and petroleum operations. Surveys of the ice thickness with Mala’s X3M, ProEX, and CX series systems are often conducted by towing or affixing antennas ranging in frequency from 250 MHz to 2.3 GHz depending on the ice profile. For heavy equipment such as mining and petroleum lower frequencies are used since ice thickness upwards of 2 meters is often measured. Lighter duty ice surveys are conducted for automobile tracks and snowmobiles.

Ski areas may chose to use GPR to map snow thickness to better manage expensive snow making operations. Having quality snow depth information allows snow making efforts to be targeted to those areas with the thinnest cover.

Glaciologists and researchers in the polar regions use the low frequency unshielded RTA series from 25 to 100 MHz for deep studies up to a few hundred meters. Mapping firn-ice contacts, depth to the basal till layer, hidden crevasses, and other information may be gleaned from GPR data.

Post processing software such as RADEXPLORER and/or REFELX facilitates automatic layer picking and tracing over kilometers of data. All Mala systems are compatable with GPS and both RADEXPLORER and REFELX seamlessly import GPS data simplifying the transposition of data to maps.