The Landsat Image Mosaic of the Antarctica Web Portal

People believe what they can see. The Poles exist as a frozen dream to most people. The International Polar Year wants to break the ice (so to speak), open up the Poles to the general public, support current polar research, and encourage new research projects. The IPY officially begins in March, 2007. As part of this effort, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), with funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), are developing three Landsat mosaics of Antarctica and an Antarctic Web Portal with a Community site and an online map viewer. When scientists are able to view the entire scope of polar research, they will be better able to collaborate and locate the resources they need. When the general public more readily sees what is happening in the polar environments, they will understand how changes to the polar areas affect everyone. Work performed under U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Contract 03CRCN001 1 THREE LANDSAT MOSAICS The USGS Center for Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) and BAS are producing three new Landsat composites. The first is a 30-meter resolution natural color composite of Landsat-7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) bands 4, 3, and 2, to be used for identifying vegetation and rock. The second is also a 30-meter resolution color composite of Landsat-7 ETM+ but with bands 3, 2, and 1, which are considered better for characterizing ice and snow. The third is a 15-meter resolution, grayscale composite of the panchromatic band. These composites are generated from 1,028 hand-selected scenes, terrain-corrected before being mosaicked into the final product. The Landsat composite products will be made available online for direct access as an OpenGIS consortium Web Mapping Specification (WMS) and Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) ArcIMS image map service. These products will also be available to download in several formats from the USGS Seamless Data Distribution System (SDDS), also known as The Seamless Server. In addition, the original 1,028 Landsat scenes will also be hosted online for direct download using the Tiled Data Distribution System (TDDS). Data Science Journal, Volume 6, Supplement, 27 May 2007