The Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica

• Published in: Remote Sensing of Environment
• Main Authors: Bindschadler, Robert, Vornberger, Patricia, Fleming, Andrew, Fox, Adrian, Mullins, Jerry, Binnie, Douglas, Paulsen, Sara Jean, Granneman, Brian, Gorodetzky, David
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Elsevier 2008
• Subjects: Glaciology; Data and Information; Antarc*; Antarctica; International Polar Year
• Online Access: http://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/11398/

The Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica (LIMA) is the first true-color, high-spatial-resolution image of the seventh continent. It is constructed from nearly 1100 individually selected Landsat-7 ETM+ scenes. Each image was orthorectified and adjusted for geometric, sensor and illumination variations to a standardized, almost seamless surface reflectance product. Mosaicing to avoid clouds produced a high quality, nearly cloud-free benchmark data set of Antarctica for the International Polar Year from images collected primarily during 1999-2003. Multiple color composites and enhancements were generated to illustrate additional characteristics of the multispectral data including: the true appearance of the surface: discrimination between snow and bare ice; reflectance variations within bright snow; recovered reflectance values in regions of sensor saturation; and subtle topographic variations associated with ice flow. LIMA is viewable and individual scenes or user defined portions of the mosaic are downloadable at http://Iima.usgs.gov. Educational materials associated with LIMA are available at http://Iima.nasa.gov.