Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicle LiDAR-based High Spatial Resolution Topographic Dataset in Russell Glacier, Greenland

Abstract

Greenland contains a large continental glacier. The influence of glacier melting has been expanding due to global warming. Although regional monitoring based on satellite data is being conducted, the demand for local/specific variation observation has increased as rising climate temperature patterns in the polar region. In this study, a precise topographic dataset was created for Greenland’s Russell glacier using a small unmanned aerial vehicle (sUAV) onboarded LiDAR sensor. A precise digital surface model (DSM) was constructed based on LiDAR data obtained at an altitude of about 100 to 200 m, and DSM resampled to a 2 m sample distance was produced to confirm its applicability by comparing before-and-after variations. This study provides DSM data applied with a pre/post-processing used for the comparison analysis.