LiDAR elevation data of Yukon Coast and Herschel Island in 2012 and 2013

• Main Authors: Obu, Jaroslav, Lantuit, Hugues, Fritz, Michael, Grosse, Guido, Günther, Frank, Sachs, Torsten, Helm, Veit
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: PANGAEA 2016
• Subjects: Arctic; Yukon; Herschel Island; Herschel
• Online Access: https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.859046; https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.859046

LiDAR scanning of the Yukon Coast and Herschel Island took place during the AIRMETH (AIRborne studies of METHane emissions from Arctic wetlands) campaigns (Kohnert et al., 2014) on 10 July 2012 and on 22 July 2013. Point cloud data were acquired with a RIEGL LMSVQ580 laser scanner instrument on board the Alfred Wegener Institute's POLAR-5 science aircraft. The laser scanner was operated with a 60° scan angle at a flight height of around 200 m above ground in 2012 and 500 m in 2013. This resulted in a scan width from 200 (2012) to 500 m (2013) and a mean point-to-point distance of 0.5–1.0 m. During the flight on July 10, 2012 the weather was cloudy with a cloud base around 200 m.a.s.l. . Air temperature ranged between 10 and 12 °C with wind speed ranging from 15 to 19 km/h from easterly direction (70–90°). The last recorded storm was on June 17. During the scanning on July 22, 2013, the weather was nearly cloudless with air temperature 9 °C. Wind speed was 15 km/h from easterly direction (60–80°). The last storm before the acquisition occurred on July 2. Raw laser data were calibrated, combined with the post-processed GPS trajectory, corrected for altitude, and referenced to the EGM (Earth Gravitational Model) 2008 geoid (Pavlis et al., 2008). The final georeferenced point cloud data accuracy was determined to be better than 0.15 ± 0.1 m. The loss of accuracy varied along the flight track because of the vertical accuracy of the post-processed GPS trajectory. The GPS datawere acquired in 50Hz resolutionwith aNovatel OEM4 receiver on board POLAR-5. The GPS trajectory was post-processed using precise ephemerides and the commercial software package Waypoint 8.5 (PPP [precise point positioning] processing). For the interpolation to the final DEM an inverse distance weighting (IDW) algorithm was applied using all cloud points within a 10 m radius of each point. Finally, the DEMs from the different acquisition years were interpolated toraster grids of 1 m horizontal resolution in NAD83 UTM zone 7 coordinate system. To ...