The Polar Geospatial Center is a research center at the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota Twin Cities (historically known as University of Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint ...

's College of Science and Engineering funded by the National Science Foundation's Office of Polar Programs. Founded in 2007, the Polar Geospatial Center "provides geospatial support, mapping, and GIS/remote sensing solutions to researchers and logistics groups in the polar science community." It is currently directed by Paul Morin.

History

The Polar Geospatial Center (PGC) was founded in 2007 and was originally called the Antarctic Geospatial Information Center (AGIC). In its early days, the AGIC's goal was to provide basic mapping and GIS services for the

United States Antarctic Program The United States Antarctic Program (or USAP; formerly known as the United States Antarctic Research Program or USARP and the United States Antarctic Service or USAS) is an organization of the United States government which has a presence in the ...

(USAP), and was only a two-man project. As time went on, the program's credibility and size expanded. By 2010, the program had over a half dozen team members. In March 2011, the program was "classified as a National Science Foundation cooperative agreement" and adapted to take responsibility for

Arctic The Arctic (; . ) is the polar regions of Earth, polar region of Earth that surrounds the North Pole, lying within the Arctic Circle. The Arctic region, from the IERS Reference Meridian travelling east, consists of parts of northern Norway ( ...

as well as Antarctic operations, hence the name change to PGC.

Services

The PGC's current goal is to support federally funded researchers in the Arctic and Antarctic. The PGC utilizes geospatial and remote sensing technology to work with research teams and solve problems. Some specific examples of services are listed below.

Image delivery & analysis

The PGC has a large collection of both satellite imagery as well as aerial photography at various resolutions. The PGC provides commercial satellite imagery for United States federally-funded polar researchers.

Digital Elevation Models

The PGC provides high-resolution digital elevation models (DEMs) derived from stereoscopic optical imagery. The ArcticDEM project, an 8-meter posting pan-Arctic DEM, was announced by then-President Barack Obama on September 3, 2015. ArcticDEM has already been successfully applied to automatically explore and classify glacial landforms.

Custom map requests

The PGC employs individuals skilled in cartography and GIS to create custom maps of areas for researchers preparing to head into the field.

Map collection

The PGC Map Catalog hosts thousands of Antarctic and Arctic maps in digital form. These maps are from many different organizations and periods in time. Many of these maps are publicly available, some are not and may be provided upon request.

References

{{University of Minnesota campus __FORCETOC__ University of Minnesota Science and technology in Antarctica Arctic research Geographic data and information organizations in the United States National Science Foundation 2007 establishments in Minnesota