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THE GEOREFERENTIATION OF REMOTELY SENSED ANTARCTIC IMAGERY 
LUIGI ROSSI* **, WAYNE DEMPSTER***, BRETT MANSELL*** 
** Ente per le Nuove Tecnologie, l’Energia e l’Ambiente (ENEA), Rome, Italy 
*** Department Of Survey and Land Information (DOSLI), Christchurch, New Zealand 
ABSTRACT 
Satellite remote sensing is a powerful tool for environmental investigations: its use 
greately increased in Antarctica due to the extreme environmental conditions and to the 
crucial role that this continent plays on the Global Changes. In this paper the procedure 
developed at ENEA for the collection of Ground Control Points, used in the 
georeferentiation of satellite images, is presented. Two commercial products are tested 
to produce ortho-rectified images of the same area. 
1. INTRODUCTION 
In Antarctica the use of traditional field metodologies for the investigation in different scientific disciplines 
related to the environment is not practicable due to several factors. The first of those is the climate extreme 
conditions. The mean temperature, e.g., is below -50 °C in the central plateau, while along the coasts, in summer, 
is about 0 °C; moreover sudden katabatic winds can reach the speed of 300 km/h. 
Under the Programma Nazionale di Ricerche in Antartide (PNRA) a wide spectrum of scientific activities 
are carried out in Antarctica. These activities spread from Geology, for the investigation of the structure and 
geological evolution of the continent and the surrounding ocean, to Biology for the study of antarctic organisms, 
from the analisys of the polar atmosphere to the human medicine in extreme environment, from the ground, 
marine and air pollution studies to the activities for the comprehension of the Global Changes phenomena. In the 
last case, e.g., the polar glaciers play an important role both on a local and, mainly, on a planetary scale. Polar ices 
are considered as early indicators of the environmental changes: looking at the glacial stream dynamics, at the 
shelves and ice tongues behaviours, and so on, it is possible to understand the processes linked to those changes 
and start to make predictions on the future climate of the earth. 
Taking into account the above considerations and the fact that wide areas have to be investigated, the use of 
remote sensing becomes a powerful tool in antarctic environmental studies. 
2. THE REMOTE SENSED IMAGERY GEOREFERENTIATION 
The “original” remote sensed image is distorted due both to the acquisition asset of the platform (airplane 
or satellite) and to the displacement of the ground elementary areas (pixel) due to terrain orography. Therefore, it 
is not possible to extract true quantitative information or to have the image as a cartographic background for the 
superposition to any map of the same area having the appropriate scale. These kinds of operations are possible if 
* Presented at the International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing “Workshop on New Developments in 
Geographic Information Systems”, Milan, Italy, 6-8 March 1996.