Data sources and reports

Soil studies by Iain Campbell, Graeme Claridge, and their colleagues over 35 years have been organised into the soils reports accessible from this part of the website. You can also view the soil sites using an interactive map viewer.

This is a 'point' database containing descriptions of over 1,000 soil pits, together with their chemical, physical, and mineralogical characteristics, at soil sites clustered around ice-free areas. Site descriptions include observations of the surrounding geological, topographic and climatic contexts, and local surface features, site moisture, parent material and biology.

Explore pre-2005 database

Explore post-2005 database

The SCAR Composite Gazetteer of Antarctica (CGA) has been compiled over a period of 29 years (commenced 1992) and consists of 39,007 names that correspond to 20,105 features. The place names information has been submitted by the national names committees from 22 countries and compiled by Roberto Cervellati and Chiara Ramorino from the Italian Antarctic names committee - Comitato per i nomi geografici antartici.

The SCAR CGA is a relational database - related to the SCAR Map catalogue, SCAR Feature Catalogue and the SCAR Flora and Fauna databases (all developed by the Australian Antarctic Data Centre). This allows the search for Antarctic names, maps and flora and fauna information to be addressed via the gazetteer or map catalogue with results showing links to national names committees, map publishers, map retailers and small scale maps showing the distribution of flora and fauna.

SCAR Map catalogue

SCAR Feature Catalogue

Vector data from the SCAR Antarctic Digital Database (ADD) managed by British Antarctic Survey have been downloaded from their website.

The ADD is a seamless compilation of topographic data for Antarctica to 60°S. The ADD is the place to view, query and download topographic datasets such as the Antarctic coastline, contours and rock outcrop.

British Antarctic Survey (BAS) compiles, manages and distributes the ADD datasets on behalf of SCAGI, the SCAR Standing Committee on Geographic Information.

ADD datasets and data access

Visit the Antarctic Digital Database map viewer to visualise the available data. Data can be downloaded through the data catalogue in Geopackage or Shapefile format.

Datasets

The datasets included in the ADD are:

• Coastline, including grounding lines and ice shelf fronts
• Rock outcrop
• Contours
• Lakes
• Moraine
• Streams
• Seamask
• ADD data limit at 60°S

All datasets are in WGS84 Antarctic Polar Stereographic projection, EPSG 3031.

Antarctic Digital Database Map Viewer

A quadrant of the 1.6GB medium resolution version of the Radarsat-1 Antarctic Mapping Project (RAMP) SAR mosaic was extracted and downloaded for use from the National Snow & Ice Data Centre.

The mosaic provides a detailed look at ice sheet morphology, rock outcrops, research infrastructure, the coastline, and other features of Antarctica, as well as representing calibrated radar backscatter data, which may provide insight into climate processes affecting the upper few meters of snow cover.

The high-resolution RAMP Digital Elevation Model (DEM) combines topographic data from a variety of sources to provide consistent coverage of all of Antarctica.

The following products are available:

• A 125 m resolution Version 2 mosaic is available via HTTPS as a flat binary file accompanied by a descriptive README file.
• The 25 m resolution Version 2 images and ancillary data comprise approximately 90 separate tiles. Each 25 m resolution tile is composed of many sub-tiles which must be assembled into the tile image. Tiles are packaged with the necessary tools and with a variety of ancillary information, including surface elevation and information about the original swath data used to create the mosaic. README files are included in each tile’s directory.
• 200 m, 500 m, and 1 km resolution Version 2 GeoTIFF images are available via HTTPS.

RAMP AMM-1 SAR Image Mosaic of Antarctica, Version 2