Because of the remoteness of the lakes the mapping equipment had to be easily transportable by foot and rugged
enough to handle the highly variable weather of an arctic summer.  To this end a small inflatable kayak was used
along with a combination Garmin GPS and depth sounder.  In addition to combining position and depth

information the Garmin GPS sounder displayed the current position of the kayak and its past path on a basic map
of the area to allow evenly spaced transects to be run across each lake.  Transects were run in a grid pattern
with a maximum separation of about 30 meters.  Position and depth information from the GPS sounder were
recorded every two seconds to a hand held computer.

   Later the data was imported into ESRI's Arc/Info geographic information systems software where a TIN
(Triangulated Irregular Network) structure for each lake was created.  This is essentially a 3D model of the lake.
From this data contour maps and area and volume measurements can be made.

      INTRO   METHODS   MAPS/DATA