"Airborne
LIDAR/GPS Mapping of Ice Sheets and Glaciers"
The Airborne Topographic Mapper (ATM) at the NASA Goddard Space Flight
Center Wallops Flight Facility has been conducting systematic
topographic surveys of the Greenland Ice Sheet since 1993, using
scanning airborne laser altimeters combined with Global Positioning
System (GPS) technology. This year, with ICESat I nearing its
operational end, and a replacement not due for at least 5 years, NASA
HQ decided to expand the aircraft remote sensing of ice sheets and sea
ice to provide the cryospheric science community with interim data sets
to monitor changes in Polar Regions. The first of these surveys
took place in the spring of 2009, in which numerous segments of ICESat
ground tracks in critical areas in Greenland were resurveyed along with
many of the previously surveyed aircraft lines. Just wrapping up
is a deployment to Punta Arenas, Chile, using NASA’s DC8 long-range
aircraft to survey critical sites in Antarctica. Data from some
of this field work will be presented.
