High-Resolution Antarctic Fast Ice Maps from SAR, 2008-2009

2008 and 2009 winter-spring periods are covered by this dataset of coastal landfast sea ice distribution near the Cape Darnley Polynya in East Antarctica. It was derived from Envisat Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) images using a modified IMCORR algorithm to identify stationary ice. The data is provided by the AU_AADC organization and was last updated in November 2009.

Use Cases

• Mapping the seasonal extent of coastal fast ice based on stationary ice vectors.
• Studying polynya dynamics and formation by analyzing the boundary between fast ice and moving pack ice.
• Validating lower-resolution sea ice datasets, such as those from MODIS, using high-resolution SAR-derived maps.
• Analyzing ice motion and stability in the East Antarctic region during winter and spring.

Strengths

• High spatial resolution with a 75-meter pixel size.
• Uninterrupted coverage due to use of SAR data, which is not affected by cloud cover or polar darkness.
• Covers two winter-spring periods (2008, 2009) with high temporal resolution from image pairs separated by 2 to 21 days.

Limitations

• Last updated 2009-11-30 23:59:59.999000; freshness should be verified.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

AU_AADC via nasa_earthdata

Collection Method

Derived from cross-correlation of Envisat ASAR image pairs using a modified IMCORR algorithm, as described in Giles et al., 2011.

Time Range

June-November periods of 2008 and 2009

Freshness

2009-11-30 23:59:59.999000

Geography

Vicinity of the Cape Darnley Polynya, East Antarctica