News

Title	DUE Permafrost ITT
	2008-12-04
	The Invitation To Tender (ITT) on the DUE Permafrost, Ref. AO5826 in the ESA Invitations to Tender, has been published on EMITS with a closing date of 5 January 2009.
	The European Space Agency (ESA) hereby invites all interested companies from DUE participating countries to submit a tender for the DUE Permafrost procurement. If companies are not yet registered as an ESA bidder, they are invited to obtain access to EMITS by completing a questionnaire, which can be found at the indicated URL below, section Registration Request. The Permafrost project will develop, validate and implement information services to support universities, research centres, international programmes and private or public organisations in their work on understanding permafrost better by integration of EO data. Permafrost can not be directly detected from space, but many surface features of permafrost terrains and typical periglacial landforms are observable with a variety of EO sensors ranging from very high to medium resolution in various wavelengths. Service cases will cover different aspects of permafrost by integrating in situ measurements of subsurface permafrost properties (active layer depth, active layer and permafrost temperatures, organic layer thickness, liquid water content in the active layer and permafrost), surface properties (vegetation cover, snow depth), liquid water content in the active layer and permafrost) and modelling to provide a better understanding of permafrost today. The techniques will extend point source process and permafrost monThe techniques will extend point source process and permafrost monitoring to a broader spatial domain, to support permafrost distribution modelling and mapping techniques implemented in a GIS framework and will complement active layer and thermal observing networks with monitoring of active geological processes. For the assessment with user organisations of the potential and limitations of EO based information services the project will include different service cases in the boreal zone. The Permafrost project objectives are to: (i) Define EO based services for permafrost monitoring based on user requirements (ii) Integrate latest EO technology with state of the art ground based observations (iii) Demonstrate and validate the services with the user organisations (iv) Develop mid to long term scenarios for permafrost monitoring