Heavy Ground Disturbance Footprint at Davis Antarctic Station

A 2008 geospatial footprint maps all visible heavy surface disturbance surrounding Australia's Davis Station in Antarctica. The dataset was created by the Australian Antarctic Data Centre, combining aerial imagery mapping with ground-truthing fieldwork conducted on December 11, 2008. It supports the development of standardized environmental impact assessments for Antarctic operations.

Use Cases

• Quantify the total area of heavy ground disturbance using the polygon geometry from the shapefile.
• Assess changes in station environmental footprint over time by comparing this 2008 disturbance layer with later surveys.
• Model the spatial relationship between station infrastructure and surface disturbance using the georeferenced polygon features.
• Validate remote sensing classification algorithms for detecting surface disturbance by using the ground-truthed 2008 data as a labeled set.

Strengths

• Data is ground-truthed with fieldwork measurements from a specific date (December 11, 2008).
• Derived from peer-reviewed research published in the Journal of Environmental Assessment Policy and Management (2014).

Limitations

• Dataset is from a single point in time (2008), limiting analysis of trends.
• Spatial coverage is restricted to the immediate vicinity of Davis Station.

Provenance

Source

Australian Antarctic Data Centre (AU_AADC), supported by the Australian Antarctic Program.

Collection Method

GIS-mapped from aerial imagery and corrected via ground-truthing fieldwork.

Time Range

2008

Freshness

2008-12-11

Geography

Davis Station, Antarctica.