Polar Monitor - Ice sheet drainage basins - Antarctica, 2010-2021

The drainage divides of ice sheets separate the overall glaciated area into multiple sectors. These drainage basins are essential for partitioning mass changes of the ice sheet, as they specify the area over which basin specific measurements are integrated. In (Krieger et al., 2020) we developed a modified watershed algorithm for delineating individual glaciers and applied it to the Northeast Greenland sector. Here we extended the processing to the entire Antarctic Ice Sheet.

Citation proposal
German Aerospace Center (DLR). Polar Monitor - Ice sheet drainage basins - Antarctica, 2010-2021. https://gdk.gdi-de.org/geonetwork/srv/api/records/39fd6746-3e32-437c-9b8f-097326d62cf6

Simple

Date ( Creation ): 2025-07-10T00:00:00

Edition

Identifier: https://geoservice.dlr.de/catalogue/srv/metadata/39fd6746-3e32-437c-9b8f-097326d62cf6

Presentation form: Digital map

Other citation details: DOI: 10.15489/kel9qeeou202

Purpose: Individual glacier catchments support a quantification of glacier changes for a specified region and are therefore an important tool in the field of glaciology and hydrology. The Antarctic drainage basins provide detailed information for partitioning mass changes of the ice sheet to the individual glacier or regional level.

Status: Completed

Author

German Aerospace Center (DLR) -

Point of contact

German Aerospace Center (DLR)

Maintenance and update frequency: As needed

GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0 ( Theme )

Hydrography

Spatial scope ( Place )

National

Keywords

DLR
EOC
Catchments
Drainage basins
Watershed
Glacier
Ice Sheet
Antarctica
opendata

Use limitation: Nutzungseinschränkungen: Das DLR ist nicht haftbar für Schäden, die sich aus der Nutzung ergeben. / Use Limitations: DLR not liable for damage resulting from use.

Access constraints: Other restrictions

Use constraints: Other restrictions

Other constraints: Nutzungsbedingungen: Lizenz, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Terms of use: License, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Other constraints

{"id": "cc-by-4.0",

"name": "Creative-Commons - Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)",

"url": "http://dcat-ap.de/def/licenses/cc-by/4.0",

"quelle": "Copyright DLR (2025)"}

Spatial representation type: Grid

Denominator: 1000000

Metadata language: English

Character set: UTF8

Distribution format

geo+json ()
geopackage+sqlite3 ()
vnd.shp ()

OnLine resource: HTTP download Polar Monitor Antarctica
HTTP download Polar Monitor Antarctica

OnLine resource: Scientific Publication
Scientific Publication

OnLine resource: EOC Geoservice Dataset
EOC Geoservice Dataset

Hierarchy level: Dataset

Domain consistency

Measure identification: INSPIRE / Conformity_001

Conformance result

Date ( Publication ): 2010-12-08

Explanation: See the referenced specification.

Pass: true

Statement: Input data: In the modified watershed approach ice sheet wide velocity measurements by Sentinel-1 SAR (Nagler et al., 2015) and the 90 m TanDEM-X Polar DEM (Wessel et al., 2021) are combined to derive individual glacier drainage basins for the entire Antarctic Ice Sheet. The algorithm is seeded at the grounding line (Mouginot et al., 2017)

Description

Originating from selected seed points at the grounding line we produced discrete stream lines based on the methodology of (Cabral et al., 1993) for all areas exceeding a threshold of 50 m/yr and followed these upstream. For slower areas a classical flood-filling watershed algorithm is adopted (Beucher et al., 1992). A Monte Carlo simulation was performed, repeating the catchment delineation procedure 5000 times to account for uncertainties. The final catchment label was then determined by selecting the label that emerged as the majority outcome across all simulations. For processing details please consult (Krieger et al., 2020).

The methodology has been validated in the Northeast Greenland sector by comparing the basin extent to existing delineations in the literature. Marginal discrepancies in catchment area arise for various reasons, including the choice of the DEM, the velocity dataset or the used methodology. As an independent, high accuracy data base for full validation of the results is lacking, quality assessment was supported by performing an intercomparsion with different input data combinations of DEMs and ice velocity products showing discrepancies of up to 16% in the extent of the catchment area. The quality of the presented results was further assessed by a probability measure from additional Monte-Carlo experiment.