China Maps Antarctica
A Chinese expedition is set to produce the first land cover map of Antarctica by the end of this year, Xinhua reports. “The map, with the application of high resolution remote sensing technology, will for the first time in the history show the distribution of key features on the continent, including sea ice, snow, blue ice, rocks, soil marshes, lakes and ice crevasse.” They’re also making use of U.S. Landsat imagery. When did China start getting interested in Antarctica? Via Spatial Sustain.
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“When did China start getting interested in Antarctica?” By 1983 anyway, when China became a signatory to the Antarctic treaty (http://www.scar.org/treaty/signatories.html).
The Landsat mapping component sounds broadly similar to the Landsat Image Mosaic Of Antarctica (http://lima.usgs.gov/), while the existing Antarctic Digital Database contains the features listed as GIS vector data (http://www.add.scar.org:8080/add/).
November 3, 2009 at 7:43 AM