MASS BALANCE OF THE PACIFIC OCEAN SECTOR OF ANTARCTICA FROM REMOTELY SENSED DATA

It is well documented that many Antarctic ice streams and outlet glaciers have changed dramatically during the last two decades. In order to understand the significance of these short-term changes it is desirable to extend the time line as far back as possible. Changes since the mid 1900s can be investigated by including historical aerial photographs in the analysis. This has rarely been done, however, mainly because of the lack of ground control points that are required to orient old photography.

This poster focuses on new methodologies and interdisciplinary approaches that greatly facilitate the use of old photography for quantitative studies. An absolute prerequisite for the successful use of old photography is a rigorous registration, either with other sensory input data or with respect to 3D reference systems. Recent advances in digital photogrammetry allow registration with linear features, such as lines, curves and free-form lines without the need for identifying identical points. The concept of sensor invariant features was developed to register such disparate data sets as aerial imagery and 3D laser point clouds, originating from satellite laser altimetry or airborne laser scanning systems. Our poster presents results on investigating changes of outlet glaciers draining to Amundsen Sea from a series of historical aerial photographs, ASTER images and satellite laser altimetry profiles acquired by NASA's Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) mission.