Terrestrial Signature of a Recently-Tidewater Glacier and Adjacent Periglaciation, Windy Glacier (South Shetland Islands, Antarctic)

Kreczmer, Kacper; Dąbski, Maciej; Zmarz, Anna

doi:10.3389/feart.2021.671985

Cited by 9 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…The chronology of blue ice moraines in Queen Maud Land is also established by Akçar et al (2020) [51] using surface exposure dating with multiple cosmogenic nuclides of boulders, guided by the photogrammetric products after UAV surveys. The current retreat of glaciers allows identifying, mapping and quantifying the glacial and periglacial landforms developed in the proglacial zone with a very high detail after UAV-based products (image mosaic and DEM) like presented by Kreczmer et al (2021) [52] in the Warszawa Icefield, King George Island.…”

Section: Landforms and Soilsmentioning

confidence: 99%

UAVs for Science in Antarctica

Pina

Vieira

2022

Remote Sensing

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Remote sensing is a very powerful tool that has been used to identify, map and monitor Antarctic features and processes for nearly one century. Satellite remote sensing plays the main role for about the last five decades, as it is the only way to provide multitemporal views at continental scale. But the emergence of small consumer-grade unoccupied aerial vehicles (UAVs) over the past two decades has paved the way for data in unprecedented detail. This has been also verified by an increasing noticeable interest in Antarctica by the incorporation of UAVs in the field activities in diversified research topics. This paper presents a comprehensive review about the use of UAVs in scientific activities in Antarctica. It is based on the analysis of 190 scientific publications published in peer-reviewed journals and proceedings of conferences which are organised into six main application topics: Terrestrial, Ice and Snow, Fauna, Technology, Atmosphere and Others. The analysis encompasses a detailed overview of the activities, identifying advantages and difficulties, also evaluating future possibilities and challenges for expanding the use of UAV in the field activities. The relevance of using UAVs to support numerous and diverse scientific activities in Antarctica becomes very clear after analysing this set of scientific publications, as it is revolutionising the remote acquisition of new data with much higher detail, from inaccessible or difficult to access regions, in faster and cheaper ways. Many of the advances can be seen in the terrestrial areas (detailed 3D mapping; vegetation mapping, discrimination and health assessment; periglacial forms characterisation), ice and snow (more detailed topography, depth and features of ice-sheets, glaciers and sea-ice), fauna (counting penguins, seals and flying birds and detailed morphometrics) and in atmosphere studies (more detailed meteorological measurements and air-surface couplings). This review has also shown that despite the low environmental impact of UAV-based surveys, the increasing number of applications and use, may lead to impacts in the most sensitive Antarctic ecosystems. Hence, we call for an internationally coordinated effort to for planning and sharing UAV data in Antarctica, which would reduce environmental impacts, while extending research outcomes.

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Section: Landforms and Soilsmentioning

confidence: 99%

UAVs for Science in Antarctica

Pina

Vieira

2022

Remote Sensing

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“…The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), a new platform, has been proven to be a useful tool in glaciological applications because it can collect data in a variety of ways and has a high spatial and temporal resolution compared to traditional ground-based measurements and remote sensing from space (Qiao et al, 2023). In recent years, with advantages in operation and safety, UAVs have been used in various aspects of polar research, such as glacial geomorphology (Kreczmer et al, 2021), glacier topography (Benoit et al, 2019), and calving events (Chudley et al, 2019). It has been proven that more detailed analysis could be performed for glacier surface micro-topography studies in Antarctica based on UAV technology.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Surface topography modelling and ice flow velocity mapping of Dalk Glacier, East Antarctica: application of UAV remote sensing

Cao,

Tang,

Yuan

et al. 2024

Int. Arch. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci.

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Abstract. The Antarctic Ice Sheet is the largest potential contributor to global sea level rise due to global climate warming, making it important to monitor changes in the marginal outlet glacier dynamics and surface topography. The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), a new platform, has been proven to be a useful tool in glaciological applications because it can collect data in a variety of ways and has a high spatial and temporal resolution compared to traditional ground-based measurements and remote sensing from space. In this study, we used the combined UAV platform composed of the DJI Mavic 3 Enterprise (M3E) and M300 (L1) versions to perform high-accuracy on-site investigations of Dalk Glacier, a typical outlet glacier near the Zhongshan Station in East Antarctica. During the 39th Chinese Antarctic Expedition (CHINARE) in 2022–2023, UAV surveys with multiple sensors were performed. The M3E optical camera makes it possible to reconstruct high-resolution ortho-mosaic and digital elevation models (DEMs) of Dalk Glacier with high accuracy based on photogrammetric principles, helping us to extract the features of glacier surface topography, while dense point clouds derived from the L1 LiDAR camera are used to validate and improve the three-dimensional accuracy. To further monitor the dynamics and stability of Dalk Glacier, we generate ice flow velocity maps using ortho-mosaics for the years 2019, 2020, and 2023. The spatiotemporal changes in ice flow velocities were further compared with the products derived from satellite remote sensing data.

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“…Therefore, the use of small UAVs in the terrestrial regions of Antarctica is increasing steadily. The successful application of the UAV methodology was already implemented in a multitude of objectives (Zmarz et al, 2018), like wildlife inventorying and monitoring (e.g., : Goebel et al, 2015;Mustafa et al, 2018;Korczak-Abshire et al, 2019), periglacial landform mapping (Dąbski et al, 2017;Pina et al, 2019), glacier forelands (Dąbski et al, 2020;Kreczmer et al, 2021), and monitoring sea ice surface features (Li et al, 2019), among others (Pina and Vieira, 2022). The UAVs based vegetation studies in Antarctica are extremely helpful in providing additional details for mapping procedures (Turner et al, 2014), obtaining the micro-topography of moss beds (Lucieer et al, 2014), assessing the stress (Malenovský et al, 2017) and health status (Turner et al, 2019) of plants, or monitoring the changes taking place in vegetation over time (Jawak et al, 2019;Bollard et al, 2022).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

BVLOS UAV missions for vegetation mapping in maritime Antarctic

Zmarz

Karlsen

Kycko

et al. 2023

Front. Environ. Sci.

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Polar areas are among the regions where climate change occurs faster than on most of the other areas on Earth. To study the effects of climate change on vegetation, there is a need for knowledge on its current status and properties. Both classic field observation methods and remote sensing methods based on manned aircraft or satellite image analysis have limitations. These include high logistic operation costs, limited research areas, high safety risks, direct human impact, and insufficient resolution of satellite images. Fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicle beyond the visual line of sight (UAV BVLOS) missions can bridge the scale gap between field-based observations and full-scale airborne or satellite surveys. In this study the two operations of the UAV BVLOS, at an altitude of 350 m ASL, have been successfully performed in Antarctic conditions. Maps of the vegetation of the western shore of Admiralty Bay (King George Island, South Shetlands, Western Antarctic) that included the Antarctic Specially Protected Area No. 128 (ASPA 128) were designed. The vegetation in the 7.5 km2 area was mapped in ultra-high resolution (<5 cm and DEM of 0.25 m GSD), and from the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), four broad vegetation units were extracted: “dense moss carpets” (covering 0.14 km2, 0.8% of ASPA 128), “Sanionia uncinata moss bed” (0.31 km2, 1.7% of ASPA 128), “Deschampsia antarctica grass meadow” (0.24 km2, 1.3% of ASPA 128), and “Deschampsia antarctica–Usnea antarctica heath” (1.66 km2, 9.4% of ASPA 128). Our results demonstrate that the presented UAV BVLOS–based surveys are time-effective (single flight lasting 2.5 h on a distance of 300 km) and cost-effective when compared to classical field-based observations and are less invasive for the ecosystem. Moreover, unmanned airborne vehicles significantly improve security, which is of particular interest in polar region research. Therefore, their development is highly recommended for monitoring areas in remote and fragile environments.

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Terrestrial Signature of a Recently-Tidewater Glacier and Adjacent Periglaciation, Windy Glacier (South Shetland Islands, Antarctic)

Cited by 9 publications

References 29 publications

UAVs for Science in Antarctica

UAVs for Science in Antarctica

Surface topography modelling and ice flow velocity mapping of Dalk Glacier, East Antarctica: application of UAV remote sensing

BVLOS UAV missions for vegetation mapping in maritime Antarctic

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