Scientists Create Highest Resolution Antarctic Map Ever
via Slashgear
Today we’re having a peek at the newly revealed and newly-public “most accurate” high resolution terrain map of Antarctica. This is REMA, or the Reference Elevation Model of Antarctica. Straight from the folks at Ohio State University, this map is made by what its creators say is “applying fully automated, stereo auto-correlation techniques to overlapping pairs of high-resolution optical satellite images.”
The creation of this map comes in a large part thanks to open source software called Surface Extraction from TIN-based Searchspace Minimization (SETSM). This software, developed by M.J. Noh and Ian Howat at Ohio State University, helped generate the most massively accurate map of Antarctica ever created. This map is presented at 2 to 8-meter spacial resolution.
“It is the highest-resolution terrain map by far of any continent,” said Ian Howat, professor of earth sciences and director of the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center at The Ohio State University. “Up until now, we’ve had a better map of Mars than we’ve had of Antarctica. Now it is the best-mapped continent.”