Metadata details
AAS_4568_ice-free_rock_outcrop_union
All scientific data collected by the Australian Antarctic program (AAp) are eventually described in the Catalogue of Australian Antarctic and Subantarctic Metadata (CAASM). CAASM can be used to search through AAp data descriptions, and it also provides links to access publicly available datasets, which can either be immediately downloaded or obtained from the Australian Antarctic Data Centre (AADC).
- Citation
- Toth, A. and Terauds, A. (2023) Ice-free Antarctica - A union of rock outcrop layers derived from imagery collected from 1960-2020, Ver. 1, Australian Antarctic Data Centre - doi:10.26179/7mnh-j215, Accessed: 2026-06-15
- Title
- Ice-free Antarctica - A union of rock outcrop layers derived from imagery collected from 1960-2020
- Data Centre
- Australian Antarctic Data Centre, Australia
- DOI
- doi:10.26179/7mnh-j215
- Created Date
- 2023-12-12
- Revision Date
- 2025-01-15
- Expected Date of Data Release
- 2023-12-20
- Data Version
- 1
- Parent record
- AAS_4568_The_Antarctic_Ecosystem_Inventory
Datasets and documents
Related links
Description
This geotiff represents the union of the medium-resolution remote sensing-derived rock outcrop layer for Antarctica (Gerrish et al. 2020) and the high-resolution Landsat-derived rock outcrop layer (Burton-Johnson et al. 2016). This was to ensure that as much ice-free ground as possible was covered by the typology, as both layers have minor known omissions of ice-free areas due to imperfect methodology or incomplete data. The union of these two layers was masked to land areas using a high-resolution Antarctic coastline polygon from the SCAR Antarctic Digital Database to exclude areas where the rock outcrop layers do not correspond to land due to misalignment with the coastline.
The imagery was collected approximately from 1960 to 2020.
Gerrish L, Peter TF, Cooper P (2020) Medium resolution vector polygons of Antarctic rock outcrop (7.3). https://add.scar.org/
Burton-Johnson A, Black M, Peter TF, Kaluza-Gilbert J (2016) An automated methodology for differentiating rock from snow, clouds and sea in Antarctica from Landsat 8 imagery: A new rock outcrop map and area estimation for the entire Antarctic continent. Cryosphere 10:1665–1677. https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-10-1665-2016
Purpose
To provide a base layer (and spatial extent) of ice-free area for the typology of Antarctic ice-free terrestrial ecosystem.
Access
These data are publicly available for download from the provided URL.
Temporal Coverages
- Start date: 1960-01-01 - Stop date: 2020-12-31
Spatial Coverages
Science Keywords
- EARTH SCIENCE > BIOSPHERE > ECOSYSTEMS > TERRESTRIAL ECOSYSTEMS
- EARTH SCIENCE > SPECTRAL/ENGINEERING > VISIBLE WAVELENGTHS > VISIBLE IMAGERY
Additional Keywords
- ICE FREE
Locations
- GEOGRAPHIC REGION > POLAR
- CONTINENT > ANTARCTICA
Platforms
- LANDSAT
Instruments
- CAMERAS
Researchers
- toth, aniko (INVESTIGATOR,TECHNICAL CONTACT)
- terauds, aleks (INVESTIGATOR,DIF AUTHOR)
Use Constraints
This data set conforms to the CCBY Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Please follow instructions listed in the citation reference provided at http://data.aad.gov.au/aadc/metadata/citation.cfm?entry_id=AAS_4568_ice-free_rock_outcrop_union when using these data.
Project
ISO Topic
- IMAGERY/BASE MAPS/EARTH COVER
Dataset Language
- English
Orignating Centre
- Australian Antarctic Division
Dataset Progress
- COMPLETE
IDN Node
- AMD/AU
- CEOS
- AMD
Publications
- Gerrish L, Peter TF, Cooper P (2020) Medium resolution vector polygons of Antarctic rock outcrop (7.3)
- Burton-Johnson A, Black M, Peter TF, Kaluza-Gilbert J (2016) An automated methodology for differentiating rock from snow, clouds and sea in Antarctica from Landsat 8 imagery: A new rock outcrop map and area estimation for the entire Antarctic continent., Cryosphere, 10, 1665–1677
- Tóth, A.B., Terauds A., Chown S.L., Hughes K.A. Bergstrom, D.M., Hodgson D.A. Cowan D.D., Morgan F., Clark G., Wasley J., Gibson J., van den Hoff J., Stark, J.S., Shaw, J.D., Stevens, M.I., Murray, N.J., Convey, P., Leihy, R.I. and Keith, D.A. (2024) Antarctic ice-free terrestrial ecosystems: classifying, describing and mapping Earth’s largest wilderness.
Metadata Revision History
2023-12-12 - record created by Aleks Terauds. 2023-12-20 - record and data loaded by Dave Connell. 2024-06-27 - record updated by Dave Connell to add a parent record. 2025-01-15 - record updated by Dave Connell after a corrected project URL was provided by Lewis Rockliffe.
