Digital Elevation Model Construction Using ASTER Stereo VNIR Scene in Antarctic in-land Ice Sheet

Abstract

Digital elevation information of Antarctic in-land ice sheet is very important in research of ice flow. ASTER (Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflectance Radiometer) is an imaging instrument on board Terra - the first Earth Observing System (EOS) satellite. The ASTER Earth Observation Satellite offers nearly simultaneous capture of stereo images, minimizing temporal changes and sensor modeling errors. Band 3 of the VNIR sensor includes two channels, a nadir looking scene and a backward looking scene. This provides stereo coverage from which a DEM can be automatically extracted. For the research region of Antarctic Grove Mountains, a pair of ASTER L1A stereo scene product acquired in December 27th 2001 is used to extract digital elevation model. Accuracy of the DEM is highly dependent on the source of the ground control points used. Several field ground control points in this region are selected. The final DEM result is compared to DEM surveyed in 2000 using GPS by Chinese surveyors, which indicates good accuracy and powerful usability of ASTER DEM construction in tough Antarctic in-land environment.