Gary Borstad

Background

About Gary Borstad

Dr. Gary Borstad (PhD Marine Sciences, McGill 1978) is retired vice president of ASL Environmental Sciences Inc. He has been Director of Remote Sensing at ASL since 2009 following the merger of ASL with the then 25 year old G. A. Borstad Associates Ltd. He has worked in remote sensing since 1975, and in more than 35 countries in all regions of the world with most types of satellite and aircraft sensors (optical, radar, thermal) Several themes run through his career: 1) Development of new remote sensing methods and instruments, especially hyperspectral sensing; and of water colour including chlorophyll fluorescence; 2) Application across many disciplines - including oceanography/limnology, oil spills, fisheries, forestry, geology, agriculture, military/security and 3) Application of long time series for change detection, including climate change. He helped develop the Compact Airborne Spectrographic Imager (CASI) in the late 1980s and his company has flown one ever since. In the late 1990s they redeveloped the SWIR Full Spectrum Imager (originally built by Dr. Bob Neville, Canada Centre for Remote Sensing) for commercial hyperspectral mineral exploration, and flew it on three continents for nearly a decade. Their current hyperspectral activity involves state-of-the-art satellite and airborne sensors. Since about his work focused on seasonal, inter-annual and long term change - as it relates to industrial disturbance and reclamation, and to climate. He also is interested in acoustic remote sensing of wind, bubbles, fish and zooplankton from underwater instruments that ASL manufactures. In 2025 Gary is 'mostly' retired, having transferred his management responsibilities to Dr. Kaan Ersahin several years ago. Gary still provides high level advice and strategic assistance at corporate, division and project levels, assists where his long experience in the field of remote sensing is an asset. He tries usually unsuccessfully, to avoid giving his opinions about the way things should be done. He is fascinated by machine learning and artificial intelligence - which he regards as near magic and the next big thing (doesn't everyone?). Since retirement in 2009, he has enjoyed traveling north towing a bright yellow trailer almost every fall, picking wild cranberries in Yukon, woodlot management (requiring becoming a not-so heavy equipment operator), designing a new house in the digital modelling program Blender and grand-kids. Remote sensing, especially hyper spectral and multi- temporal Oceanography, Biology