NASA 2009_AK_NASA Project: Arctic Ice Elevation and Imagery from Operation IceBridge

Alaska ice data from NASA's Operation IceBridge aircraft surveys. The collection includes orthorectified images and digital elevation models (DEMs) created by processing stereo imagery and lidar data from the Land, Vegetation, and Ice Sensor (LVIS) and Airborne Topographic Mapper (ATM). Data is hosted on AWS and requires an Earthdata Login account for access.

Use Cases

• Modeling ice sheet mass balance based on surface elevation and thickness measurements.
• Analyzing glacial topography and change detection based on stereo-photogrammetric DEMs.
• Calibrating satellite altimetry data using high-resolution airborne lidar elevation data.
• Creating base maps for polar research based on orthorectified aerial imagery.

Strengths

• Data is derived from multiple high-precision NASA instruments, including LVIS and ATM lidar.
• Products are orthorectified and provided in GeoTIFF format, a standard for geospatial data.
• License is CC-BY-4.0, permitting broad reuse with attribution.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and total data size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

NASA Operation IceBridge aircraft campaigns.

Collection Method

Processed from stereo imagery and lidar data using the NASA Ames Stereo Pipeline.

Time Range

null

Freshness

unknown

Geography

Alaska, Arctic regions.