Multispectral Airborne Mapping LiDAR Observations of the McMurdo Dry Valleys

Abstract:

Field observations have documented dramatic changes over the past decade in the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica: extreme river incisions, significant glacier loss, and the appearance of numerous thermokarst slumps. To date these observations have been sporadic and localized, and have not been able to capture change on a valley-wide scale. During the 2014-2015 Antarctic summer season, specifically between December 4th, 2014 and January 19th, 2015, we undertook a widescale airborne laser mapping campaign to collect a baseline digital elevation model for 3500 km² area of the Dry Valleys and other areas of interest. The airborne LiDAR observations were acquired with a novel multi-spectral LiDAR sensor with active laser observations at three light wavelengths (532 nm, 1064 nm, and 1550 nm) simultaneously; which not only allowed the generation of a high resolution elevation model of the area, but also provides multispectral signatures for observed terrain features. In addition to the LiDAR data, high resolution (5-15 cm pixels) digital color images were collected. During the six week survey campaign of the Dry Valleys a total of 30 flights were performed, in which about 20 billion LiDAR returns and 21,000 60-Mpixels images were collected. The primary objective of this project is to perform a topographic change detection analysis by comparing the recently acquired dataset to a lower resolution dataset collected by NASA in the 2001-2002 season. This presentation will describe the processing and analysis of this significant mapping dataset and will provide some initial observations from the high resolution topography acquired.