United States Antarctic Resource Center
United States Geological Survey
2008
USGS Landsat Image Mosaic of McMurdo Station, Antarctica
SDE raster digital data
The data obtained through The National Map Seamless Server is considered to be the "best available" data from USGS. Historical data and other data may be obtained by contacting Customer Services, Earth Resources Observation and Science Center at 1-800-252-4547.
View and download, at no charge, all of the LIMA products at http://lima.usgs.gov.
http://seamless.usgs.gov
http://lima.usgs.gov
Natural Color Pan-Sharpened : The natural-color, pan-sharpened version of LIMA combines Landsat 7ETM+ bands 3, 2, and 1 (red, green, and blue of the electromagnetic spectrum) at 30-m spatial resolution with the 15-m, colorless panchromatic band 8. Pan-sharpening maintains the natural-color information valuable for field recognition in Antarctica, but with the higher spatial resolution, features in the snow and ice will appear more clearly defined. Through resampling techniques, each pixel in the 30-m, natural-color bands is divided into four smaller pixels and then merged precisely with the pixels in the 15-m panchromatic band. With each pixel representing 15 m by 15 m (49 ft by 49 ft), scientists can identify features roughly the size of half a basketball court.
Landsat data have a wide range of uses such as earthquake hazard studies, hydrologic modeling, forestry, coastal engineering, roadway and pipeline engineering, flood plain mapping, wetland studies, geologic studies and a variety of analytical and cartographic projects.
This section of LIMA includes McMurdo Station, the largest research base in Antarctica. Located at the tip of Hut Point Peninsula on Ross Island, McMurdo has been continually operated by the United States of America since 1956. Ross Island is roughly 72 km (45 mi) across (triangular shape in the middle of the image). Zoom in to see the ice runways just off to the right of McMurdo Station. Also visible are the Erebus Glacier Tongue (just below McMurdo), the Koettlitz and Ferrar Glaciers, the Royal Society Range, and the McMurdo Dry Valleys. The original mosaic, from which this was created, may also be downloaded from this site.
1999
2002
ground condition
As needed
-22.3825664787508
-10.0724585593604
-70.8351608102246
-74.6873728621511
None
digital spatial data
U.S. Geological Survey
USGS
GIS
Earth science
imagery
satellite
radiance
thematic mapper
Landsat
remote sensing
emissivity
natural color
Polar Stereographic
Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica
LIMA
ISO 19115 Category
imageryBaseMapsEarthCover
010
geoscientificInformation
008
location
013
American Society of Photogrammetry and Remote
Sensing
National Standards for Spatial Digital Accuracy (NSSDA)
U.S. Department of Commerce, 1995, Countries, dependencies, areas of special sovereignty, and their principal administrative divisions, Federal Information Processing Standard 10-4,): Washington, D.C., National Institute of Standards and Technology
Antarctica
South Pole
none
Antarctica
Erebus Glacier Tongue
Ferrar Glacier
Hut Point Peninsula
Koettlitz Glacier
McMurdo Dry Valleys
McMurdo Station
Ross Island
Royal Society Range
Any downloading and use of these data signifies a user's agreement to comprehension and compliance of the USGS Standard Disclaimer. Ensure all portions of metadata are read and clearly understood before using these data in order to protect both user and USGS interests.
There is no guarantee of warranty concerning the accuracy of the data. Users should be aware that temporal changes may have occurred since this data set was collected and that some parts of this data may no longer represent actual surface conditions. Users should not use this data for critical applications without a full awareness of its limitations. Acknowledgement of the originating agencies would be appreciated in products derived from these data. Any user who modifies the data is obligated to describe the types of modifications performed. User specifically agrees not to misrepresent the data, nor to imply that changes made were approved or endorsed by the U.S. Geological Survey. Please refer to http://www.usgs.gov/privacy.html for the USGS disclaimer.
U.S. Geological Survey
Customer Services Representative
mailing and physical address
USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science Center
47914 252nd Street
Sioux Falls
SD
57198-0001
USA
605/594-6151
1-800-252-4547
605/594-6933
605/594-6589
custserv@usgs.gov
0800 - 1600 CT, M - F (-6h CST/-5h CDT GMT)
Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Ohio State University, Byrd Polar Research Center, Ohio State University, U.S. Antarctic Resource Center, U.S. Geological Survey, National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the British Antarctic Survey
None
Unclassified
N/A
Microsoft Windows XP Version 5.1 (Build 2600) Service Pack 2; ESRI ArcCatalog 9.1.0.722
The Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) was designed to provide a geometric accuracy of at least 250 meters (1 sigma) in low-relief areas at sea level. Terrain Correction (Level 1T) includes radiometric, geometric, and precision correction, as well as the use of a digital elevation model (DEM) to correct parallax error due to local topographic relief.
0.5
There are three on-board solar calibrators to provide an absolute accuracy of 5 percent.
All seamlines and tile edges are visually inspected. This check ensures balanced radiometry, and no VOID areas or anomalies. The L7 Data Quality Team at EROS issues Calibration Parameter Files (CPFs) containing over 15,000 coefficients that describe the radiometric and geometric characteristics of Landsat 7 data.
Thousands of Landsat Antarctica scenes were evaluated to identify the cloud-free or least cloudy scenes used for LIMA. Each scene was corrected with elevation data and sun-angle correction to provide the best possible radiometric and geometrically accurate product for scientific use. Special mosaicking techniques were developed to merge the individual scenes into a seamless whole. The LIMA team pioneered use of embedded lightweight viewers in the LIMA Web site allowing for quick and easy pan and zoom tools as well as only three clicks to download data.
The Landsat ETM+ sensor is a nadir-viewing, eight-band multispectral scanning radiometer that detects spectrally filtered radiation from several portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. The Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) sensor includes a 15-meter (m) panchromatic band (band 8), as well as improved resolution (60 m) for the thermal infrared band (band 6). All bands have two gain settings (high and low) for increased radiometric sensitivity and dynamic range, with band 6 acquired in both high and low gain for all scenes.
325
The horizontal distance between the perpendiculars through the LPS calculated "true" WRS Scene Center and the nominal (known) WRS scene center on the ground.
Original Landsat Scenes: Original Landsat scenes are processed to Level 1Gt by the National Landsat Archive Processing System (NLAPS). Level 1Gt includes systematic radiometric and geometric correction combined with the use of a Digital Elevation Model (DEM).
The LIMA team identified 1,065 scenes from more than 8,000 Antarctica scenes taken by the ETM+ sensor since Landsat 7 was launched in 1999. Each Landsat 7 scene is 184 km by 170 km (115 mi by 105 mi).
The selection of scenes began with the identification of all of the available cloud-free Landsat 7 images of Antarctica. As much as possible, scientists chose adjacent scenes from a single Landsat pass over Antarctica because of the consistent sun angles and weather conditions. Finally, areas with overlapping scenes were studied to select the best quality data available. For areas without any clear images, scientists used the least cloudy image.
Enhanced Landsat Scenes: Both the natural-color and false-color, pan-sharpened versions of LIMA are available in different stretches to bring out features in Antarctica that would not normally be visible because of the high reflectance of snow and ice. In the same way that sunglasses soften the glare, these enhancements tone down the brightness of the entire image while preserving the color balance.
1x stretch slightly darkens all of the mosaic to reveal areas of highest reflectance, such as snow-covered slopes that face the sun.
3x, 10x, and 30x stretches reveal features on the surface of the relatively flat ice sheet. By degrees they darken the areas of highest reflectance to reveal very subtle variations in the ice sheet, while areas of lower reflectance lose details and become darker, even black.
The 3x stretch still preserves some of the features in the darker areas. For example, the 3x stretch reveals ice flow features without blackening out the rocks. The 10x and 30x stretches show features that indicate the direction of the ice flow and flow irregularities on the ice sheet in the areas of highest reflectance, blackening out most other areas.
2007
EROS processing steps: 1. We start with Landsat data in NLAPS Data Format (NDF) 2. We have been running the NDF scenes through a preprocessing algorithm to correct sun angles and illumination. This code was provided by NASA scientists. The output from this step are GeoTiff files. 3. The resulting GeoTiffs from step 2 are mosaiced together after being color balanced in Photoshop. The end result is a seamless 15m mosaic of the entire continent of Antarctica. The band combination is a 4,3,2 with a pan merge. 4. The output from step 3 is ingested into Oracle/SDE to serve one large seamless layer.
2007
The McMurdo Station area was cropped from the larger mosaic at EROS and FGDC-compliant metadata were created for display through The National Map Seamless Server at <http://seamless.usgs.gov> The metadata are provided in XML format.
2008
U.S. Geological Survey
Customer Service Representative
mailing and physical address
USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science Center
47914 252nd Street
Sioux Falls
SD
57198-0001
USA
605-594-6151
1-800-252-4547
605-594-6933
605-594-6589
custserv@usgs.gov
0800 - 1600 CT, M - F (-6h CST/-5h CDT GMT)
Raster
Pixel
214758
188280
1
Polar Stereographic
0
-71
0
0
row and column
15.000000
15.000000
meters
D_WGS_1984
WGS_1984
6378137.000000
298.257224
North American Vertical Datum of 1988
1.000000
meters
Explicit elevation coordinate included with horizontal coordinates
N/A
N/A
U.S. Geological Survey
Customer Services Representative
mailing and physical address
USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science Center
47914 252nd Street
Sioux Falls
SD
57198-0001
USA
605/594-6151
1-800-252-4547
605/594-6933
605/594-6589
custserv@usgs.gov
0800 - 1600 CT, M - F (-6h CST/-5h CDT GMT)
The USGS "Distribution" point of contact is for questions relating only to the data display and download from this web site. For questions regarding data content and quality, please contact:
U. S. Antarctic Resource Center
MS 515 National Center
12201 Sunrise Valley Drive
Reston, VA 20192
The Antarctic Resource Center is open to the public between the hours of 10:00 AM and 4:30 PM, Monday through Friday. For the best possible service, please contact the USARC for an appointment prior to your visit.
Phone: (703) 648-6010
Fax: (703) 648-5080
E-mail: usarc@usgs.gov
Downloadable Data
Although these data have been processed successfully on a computer system at the USGS, no warranty expressed or implied is made by the USGS regarding the use of the data on any other system, nor does the act of distribution constitute any such warranty. Data may have been compiled from various outside sources. Spatial information may not meet National Map Accuracy Standards. This information may be updated without notification. The USGS shall not be liable for any activity involving these data, installation, fitness of the data for a particular purpose, its use, or analyses results.
Arc/Info Export Format and/or ArcView Shapefile
ArcGIS 9.1
ASCII
0.001
http://seamless.usgs.gov
The URL <http://seamless.usgs.gov> provides a map interface that allows for data downloads within a customer defined area of interest. Zoom tools are available that can be used to investigate areas of interest on the map interface. The download tool allows the customer to capture layers from the map, utilizing the Seamless Data Distribution System process for downloading. A request summary page is then generated with the download layers listed. By clicking the "download" button on the summary page, a zipped file will be generated that can be saved on the customer's computer. The file can then be unzipped and imported into various user software applications.
Not available for dissemination
None
Variable
ESRI ArcGIS Suite and/or Arc/Info or other compatible software, and supporting operating systems.
2008
unknown
20081217
U.S. Geological Survey
Customer Services Representative
mailing and physical address
USGS Center for Earth Resources Observation and Science
47914 252nd Street
Sioux Falls
SD
57198-0001
USA
605/594-6151
1-800-252-4547
605/594-6933
605/594-6589
custserv@usgs.gov
0800 - 1600 CT, M - F (-6h CST/-5h CDT GMT)
The above is the contact information for the USGS Center for Earth Resources Observation and Science in Sioux Falls, SD. This is the digital data storage and distribution center for the USGS. Metadata information can also be obtained through online services using The National Map Viewer, at http://nationalmap.usgs.gov
FGDC Content Standards for Digital Geospatial Metadata
FGDC-STD-001-1998
local time
None
None
None
Unclassified
None
http://www.esri.com/metadata/esriprof80.html
ESRI Metadata Profile