Combined use of RESURS 01 No.3 and ERS SAR data for environmental monitoring of Yamal oil and gas exploitation region: case study

The Yamal-Nenets Autonomous District (YaNAD) is in Russia. Ther are 174 gas condensate-oil deposits. Environmental implications are vital for the region. Environmental control is only possible with the use of the remote sensing. The YaNAD Committee on the Environmental Protection has initiated the project on the construction in Salekhard of the satellite receiving station and development of the geoinformation systems. The satellites RESURS-O (MSU-E and MSU-SK), NOAA (AVHRR) and METEOR are used for the environmental monitoring of the region. Since the basic difficulties of the remote sensing the Far North are caused by unfavourable weather conditions, poor illumination and cloud-screening of the inspected regions, the ERS SAR satellite data are more useful because they ensure the all-weather and all-season images. The basic spheres of application of the satellite information in the region are listed. Practical work is based on the complex analysis of the data of the “ScanEr” station and the ERS SAR images for the YaNAD territory. The “ScanEr” station consists of the antenna system, the interface, the program support receiver (Resurs Receiver), and the primary data processing unit (Scan Viewer). The facilities to record the environmental data are described