Airborne and Spaceborne Remote Sensing Characterization for Aquistore Carbon Capture and Storage Site

Aquistore is a carbon storage research and monitoring project in Southern Saskatchewan, Canada, which intends to demonstrate that storing carbon dioxide (CO2) in the deep underground is a safe, workable solution to reduce greenhouse gases. Aquistore receives carbon dioxide transported by pipeline from the nearby Boundary Dam coal-fired power plant and injects it into the deepest saline formation of the Williston Basin at a 3200-m depth. The Aquistore site is located in a region reclaimed after open-pit coal mining that was continued until the 1990s. To characterize ground conditions and anthropogenic features of the Aquistore area, we used a RapidEye Constellation optical image. In this study we detect, evaluate, and interpret the background surface changes using RADARSAT-2 satellite Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data prior to carbon dioxide injection. We have applied Multidimensional Small Baseline Subset Differential Interferometric SAR (MSBAS-DInSAR) to measure ground motion due to postmining processes and geomorphological changes during the period of June 2012 to October 2014. Four RADARSAT-2 beam modes were used to compute MSBAS-DInSAR deformation maps and time series of horizontal and vertical deformation rate components with high precision and spatial resolution. MSBAS-DInSAR deformation rates for selected sites were combined with LiDAR geomorphometric profiles to analyze dynamics of the motion. In order to detect seasonal surface changes, polarimetric analysis of RADARSAT-2 quad-pol images acquired during spring and summer of 2014 was performed.