Date (Creation)

2025-11-24

Date (Revision)

2025-11-24

Date (Publication)

2025-11-24

Date (released)

2025-11-24

Edition

1.0

Unique resource identifier

https://doi.org/10.5285/52c304a5-6ab5-4368-9152-4aad1efd9719

Codespace

doi

Unique resource identifier

GB/NERC/BAS/PDC/02117

Codespace

https://data.bas.ac.uk/

Other citation details

Please cite this item as: Gerrish, L., & Field, E. (2025). Contours, spot heights and lakes data for the Adelaide Island and Arrowsmith Peninsula region of Antarctica (2022-2025) (Version 1.0) [Data set]. NERC EDS UK Polar Data Centre. https://doi.org/10.5285/52c304a5-6ab5-4368-9152-4aad1efd9719

Credit

No credit.

Status

Completed

Point of contact

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
British Antarctic Survey	Gerrish, Laura		Author
British Antarctic Survey	Field, Elena		Author
NERC EDS UK Polar Data Centre		PDCServiceDesk@bas.ac.uk	Point of contact

Maintenance and update frequency

As needed

Maintenance note

Completed

Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) Science Keywords

• EARTH SCIENCE > Land Surface > Topography > Contours
• EARTH SCIENCE > Land Surface > Topography > Terrain Elevation

Theme

• Adelaide Island

• Antarctic Peninsula

• cartography

• contour

• elevation

• lakes

• spot heights

• topographic

Place

• Adelaide Island Antarctica

• Arrowsmith Peninsula Antarctica

• Rothera Point Antarctica

• Wright Peninsula Antarctica

• Pourquoi Pas Island Antarctica

• Horseshoe Island Antarctica

• Liard Island Antarctica

• Graham Land Antarctica

• Loubet Coast Antarctica

• Fallières Coast Antarctica

GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0

• Land cover

Access constraints

Other restrictions

Other constraints

no limitations to public access

Access constraints

Other restrictions

Other constraints

no limitations

Use constraints

License

Other constraints

Open Government Licence v3.0

Use constraints

Other restrictions

Other constraints

This data is governed by the NERC Data Policy: https://www.ukri.org/who-we-are/nerc/our-policies-and-standards/nerc-data-policy/

Use constraints

Other restrictions

Other constraints

and supplied under Open Government Licence v.3 ().

Use constraints

Other restrictions

Other constraints

None

Unique resource identifier

url

Codespace

url

Association Type

dependency

Unique resource identifier

doi

Codespace

doi

Association Type

Cross reference

Unique resource identifier

doi

Codespace

doi

Association Type

Cross reference

Unique resource identifier

doi

Codespace

doi

Association Type

Cross reference

Unique resource identifier

doi

Codespace

doi

Association Type

Cross reference

Unique resource identifier

url

Codespace

url

Association Type

Cross reference

Spatial representation type

Text, table

Language

English

Character set

UTF8

Topic category

• Elevation
• Geoscientific information

Begin date

2022-01-01

End date

2025-11-30

Supplemental Information

It is recommended that careful attention be paid to the contents of any data, and that the author be contacted with any questions regarding appropriate use. If you find any errors or omissions, please report them to polardatacentre@bas.ac.uk.

Title

European Petroleum Survey Group (EPSG) Geodetic Parameter Registry

Date (Publication)

2008-11-12

Cited responsible party

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
European Petroleum Survey Group		EPSGadministrator@iogp.org	Publisher

Unique resource identifier

urn:ogc:def:crs:EPSG::3031

Version

6.18.3

Hierarchy level

Dataset

Statement

Methodology:

**Contours:**

Using ArcGIS Pro v3.5.2, contours were extracted at 250 metre intervals from a Digital Elevation Model (DEM) created from two published datasets. The DEM is primarily created from the 32m mosaic version of REMA v2 (Howat, Ian, et al., 2022, 'The Reference Elevation Model of Antarctica - Mosaics, Version 2', https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/EBW8UC, Harvard Dataverse, V1, accessed June 2025) with some holes and artefacts filled with the Copernicus GLO-30 DEM ( https://doi.org/10.5270/ESA-c5d3d65).

Once the contours were extracted, the lines were smoothed using a 500 m smoothing tolerance and all lines <0.4 km in length were deleted. Finally, the lines were split dependant on whether they fall on ice or rock ground. These changes were to enhance cartographic presentation of the data when styled on the 1:250 000 scale map.

The shapefile contains 3 fields: the main field is called 'contour' and contains the height in metres of each contour line. The heights are in respect of the EGM2008 geoid. There is also a field called 'rock_ice' which states whether the contour falls on ice or rocky ground, and a field called 'interval' which states 'yes' or 'no' depending on whether the contour is an interval of 1000 or not. The coordinate reference system of the data is WGS84 Antarctic Polar Stereographic, EPSG 3031.

**Spot heights:**

This file contains 355 spot heights for the Adelaide Island region, each point identified as a local high point with the height extracted from the 2 metre mosaic tiles of REMA v2 (Howat, Ian, et al., 2022, ''The Reference Elevation Model of Antarctica - Mosaics, Version 2', https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/EBW8UC , Harvard Dataverse, V1, accessed June 2025.).

The spot heights were primarily extracted using the 'Spot Height Extractor' Plugin in QGIS (version 1.1 - https://plugins.qgis.org/plugins/Spot-Height-Extractor-Plugin-main/ ), with extra heights extracted as deemed necessary to suit this region and scale of map. The 32 metre version tiles of REMA v2 were first used to identify the local high points, and the 2 metre tiles were then used to extract the exact high points.

Two files are available alongside the main REMA v2 elevation files, each indicating the accuracy of a local area: 'count' details the number of contributing DEMs, and 'mad' details the median absolute deviation of height values within the contributing DEMs. Details here: https://www.pgc.umn.edu/guides/stereo-derived-elevation-models/pgc-dem-products-arcticdem-rema-and-earthdem/. These figures are useful for assessing the confidence of individual heights that were extracted, with a lower mad value indicating potentially higher accuracy. Therefore the necessary mad and count .tif files were downloaded, and the values for each height were extracted .

Finally, a field for place name was added to the resultant shapefile, where the spot height appeared to be associated with a known place name in the British Antarctic Territory gazetteer, accessed September 2025 ( https://apc.antarctica.ac.uk/ ). Where a height was not clearly identified with a place name, the field was left empty.

The spot heights dataset contains the following attributes:

* 'msl_egm08' - the height in meters of each point above mean sea level, calculated in respect of EGM08 geoid.

* 'hae_wgs84' - the height in meters of each point above ellipsoid, calculated in respect of WGS84 ellipsoid.

* 'qa_count' - the number of contributing DEMs to the REMA v2 tiles

* 'qa_mad' - the'median absolute deviation in meters of contributing DEMs to the REMA v2 tiles

* 'name' - the associated place name for each point, if a name is present

The coordinate reference system of the data is WGS84 Antarctic Polar Stereographic, EPSG 3031.

**Lakes:**

The lakes in this dataset have been digitised from Sentinel-2 satellite imagery (Copernicus Sentinel d...(10)

Data collection:

ArcGIS Pro (version 3.5.2)

QGIS (version 3.34.7)

QGIS Spot Height Extractor plugin version 1.1

Data quality:

All data is subject to error and known potential errors have been detailed in the lineage statements. Elevation data accuracy statements can be seen in the source data publications. The lakes have been interpreted from satellite imagery using the dataset creator's best knowledge of the region and available data.

Metadata

File identifier

52c304a5-6ab5-4368-9152-4aad1efd9719 XML

Metadata language

English

Character set

UTF8

Hierarchy level

Dataset

Hierarchy level name

dataset

Date stamp

2025-11-24

Metadata standard name

ISO 19115 Geographic Information - Metadata

Metadata standard version

ISO 19115:2003(E)

Metadata author

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
NERC EDS UK Polar Data Centre		polardatacentre@bas.ac.uk	Point of contact