courtesy of polar geospatial center
Right, Paul Morin, founder and director of the Polar Geospatial Center, has spent most of his career in mapping and scientific visualization.
Now a research assistant with the PGC, Niebuhr plans to seek a master’s degree in remote sensing. “That’s not what I thought I was going to pursue,” he said. “But I just find it fascinating that we can do so much with satellite imagery.” As of today, the PGC possesses what Morin calls “seamless coverage” of 90 percent of the Arctic region and 85 percent of the 14.5 million square miles in Antarctica. It provides an array of geospatial services and applications through the United States Antarctic Program (USAP) and now to researchers in the Arctic as well. The center produces on-demand maps, GIS analysis (a geographic information system, or GIS, integrates hardware, software and data) including spatial, spectral and 3D analysis, and develops new software. It also serves as a repository of earlier maps of both the Arctic and Antarctica—a storehouse that now contains several hundred thousand images—directing researchers to the data they need and then accessing that material for them.
14 INVENTING TOMORROW winter 2012
Each year the PGC sends staff to the Antarctic from October to January, where the center conducts its own on-site cartography. Among the fruits of this work are the PGC’s 3D models of all three of Antarctica’s permanent stations and new, much more detailed mapping of frozen lakes located in the McMurdo Dry Valley region. In addition to supporting researchers’ scientific needs, the PGC supplies invaluable logistical support and locating safe places to land air-
Michelle LaRue
The University of Minnesota’s Polar Geospatial Center (PGC) is responsible for creating and archiving maps. Above is a map of the Ross Island and McMurdo Station area of Antarctica. McMurdo Station, the largest U.S. base, attracts more than 800 researchers, scientists, and staff in the Austral summer.