NASA 2010 AN UTIG Project: Antarctic Surface Elevation Lidar Measurements

NASA Operation IceBridge and the ICECAP project collected geolocated surface elevation measurements over Antarctica using photon-counting and laser altimeter lidar. The data includes nadir photon counting data, position, and orientation information. Funding was provided by the NSF, Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems CRC, NERC, and NASA.

Use Cases

• Modeling ice sheet mass balance based on surface elevation measurements.
• Analyzing Antarctic topography changes based on geolocated lidar data.
• Calibrating satellite altimetry data based on high-resolution airborne lidar profiles.
• Studying cryosphere dynamics based on photon counting and laser altimeter observations.

Strengths

• Data is geolocated, providing precise spatial context.
• Collected using specialized instruments (Sigma Space Mapping Photon Counting Lidar and Riegl Laser Altimeter).
• Funded and supported by multiple major scientific organizations (NSF, NERC, NASA).

Limitations

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

Provenance

Source

NASA Operation IceBridge and the International Collaborative Exploration of the Cryosphere through Airborne Profiling (ICECAP) project.

Collection Method

Airborne data collection using Sigma Space photon counting lidar and Riegl laser altimeter.

Time Range

null

Freshness

null

Geography

Antarctica