Margin of the Antarctic ice cover derived from Synthetic Aperture Radar images for the sector 79E-108E

Brief description

Geographic location of the outer margin of the Antarctic ice cover for the sector between longitudes 79E and 108E, including margins of ice shelves, glaciers, and iceberg tongues. The data set does not in general include the grounding zone at the inland margin of the ice shelves or glaciers.

The margin was defined by interpretation of an image mosaic generated from Synthetic Aperture Radar data. The image mosaic was built using navigation data accompanying the SAR images to transform the images to a map projection. The image navigation data were adjusted so that overlapping images were registered to one another, the indivual images merged into a mosaic, and the overall process adjusted so that the mosaic was tied to the few ground control points available in this large sector. Two separate mosaics were used to span the whole sector.

The majority of the SAR data were acquired by the ERS-SAR instruments in August 1996, some ERS data were acquired in August 1993, and one Radarsat scene was acquired in September 1997. The data were pre-processed to produce a mosaic with a 100 m pixel size, and adjusted so that the majority of the coastline positions refer to the August 1996 epoch.

The location data are internally consistent, and extracted at nominally 200 m intervals. The external position accuracy is generally better than 600 m. The coverage is complete over the whole sector. The coordinate set includes some island/ice rise features. Two very large grounded icebergs are included.

Data are in an ascii arc/info export file format as geographic coordinates on the ITRF1996 system and contains attribute information.

ERS-SAR data, copyright ESA, 1993, 1996

Radarsat data, copyright Canadian Space Agency, Agence spatiale canadienne, 1997.

This work was completed as part of ASAC projects 454, 1125 and 2224 (ASAC_454, ASAC_1125 and ASAC_2224).

Full description

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