High-Resolution Aerial Mosaic of Macquarie Island Isthmus

Pixel resolution of 1.3 centimeters captures fine details of the Antarctic coastal landscape. The dataset is a georeferenced mosaic created from UAV-captured photographs over Macquarie Island's isthmus on January 31, 2015. It was produced by the Australian Antarctic Data Centre using a custom flying wing UAV equipped with a Canon EOS M camera and GPS.

Use Cases

• Analyze coastal erosion or sediment transport patterns using the 1.3 cm/pixel geotiff imagery.
• Use the georeferenced mosaic as a base layer for mapping station infrastructure and surrounding terrain features.
• Compare this 2015 snapshot with later imagery to monitor changes in the isthmus landform over time.
• Validate or train machine learning models for object detection in ultra-high-resolution aerial imagery.

Strengths

• Extremely high spatial resolution of 1.3 centimeters per pixel.
• Provides both an original georeferenced mosaic and a version aligned to the WGS84 station datum.
• Imagery captured from a low-altitude UAV flight at approximately 120 meters, enabling detailed ground observation.

Limitations

• Mosaic is not orthorectified, which may introduce terrain distortion and affect measurement accuracy.
• Single-date capture from 2015 limits temporal analysis without companion datasets.
• Spatial coverage is restricted to the Macquarie Island isthmus area.

Provenance

Source

Australian Antarctic Data Centre (AU_AADC), accessed via NASA Earthdata.

Collection Method

Imagery captured by a custom-built FX79 flying wing UAV equipped with a Canon EOS M camera and GPS. Mosaic processed using Pix4D software.

Time Range

2015-01-31

Freshness

Data represents a single snapshot from 2015-01-31.

Geography

Isthmus of Macquarie Island, a sub-Antarctic territory of Australia.