TOPOGRAPHY OF GLACIERS AND ICE CAPS WITH SPOT 5 HRS

Monitoring the evolution of glaciers, ice caps and ice streams in polar areas is of outmost importance because they constitute a good indicator of global climate change and contribute significantly to ongoing sea level rise. Accurate topographic surveys are crucial as they reflect the geometric evol...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Jérôme Korona A, Etienne Berthier B, Marc Bernard A, Frédérique Rémy B, Eric Thouvenot C
Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
Format: Text
Language:English
Subjects:
ABSTRACT
Antarctic
Antarctic Peninsula
The Antarctic
Antarc*
glaciers
International Polar Year
Alaska
Online Access:http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.184.4556
http://www.isprs.org/proceedings/XXXVII/congress/8_pdf/16_SS-12/02.pdf
Description
Summary:Monitoring the evolution of glaciers, ice caps and ice streams in polar areas is of outmost importance because they constitute a good indicator of global climate change and contribute significantly to ongoing sea level rise. Accurate topographic surveys are crucial as they reflect the geometric evolution of ice masses. Unfortunately, the precision and/or spatial coverage of available data from satellite missions (radar altimetry, ICESat) or field surveys is generally insufficient.In 2006, a pilot project led by Spot Image and IGN showed that SPOT 5 stereoscopic pairs could provide 40m Digital Terrain Models of the Antarctic Peninsula and Alaska within an absolute horizontal precision of 30m RMS.In 2007, the French Space Center (CNES) decided, within the framework of the International Polar Year and the GIIPSY project, to fund the SPIRIT (SPOT 5 stereoscopic survey of Polar Ice: Reference Images and Topographies) project, a huge HRS coverage of polar areas. Thanks to this program, jointly managed by Spot Image and the LEGOS, the opportunity is given to the Scientific Community to browse a massive archive of stereoscopic pairs and to freely obtain large amounts of DTMs over the polar areas. This paper will present the stereoscopic coverage achieved so far over Northern and Southern polar areas up to 81°N/S. We will also describe in details the Polar DALI web interface and the specific SPIRIT product. The conclusion will summarize the impact of the availability of such high accuracy elevation data on glaciology research. 1.

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