Digital Elevation Models and Orthomosaics of 1989 aerial imagery of the Western Antarctic Peninsula and surrounding islands between 66–68°&thinsp;S

Thota, Vijaya Kumar; Seehaus, Thorsten; Knuth, Friedrich; Dehecq, Amaury; Salewski, Christian; Farías-Barahona, David; Braun, Matthias H.

doi:10.5194/essd-18-597-2026

Articles | Volume 18, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-18-597-2026

© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-18-597-2026

© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 18, issue 1

Data description paper

|

23 Jan 2026

Data description paper |

| 23 Jan 2026

Digital Elevation Models and Orthomosaics of 1989 aerial imagery of the Western Antarctic Peninsula and surrounding islands between 66–68° S

Vijaya Kumar Thota, Thorsten Seehaus, Friedrich Knuth, Amaury Dehecq, Christian Salewski, David Farías-Barahona, and Matthias H. Braun

Data sets

Digital Elevation Models and Orthomosaics of Institut für Angewandte Geodäsie (IfAG) Aerial Imagery from 1989 Vijaya Kumar Thota et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17949026

Model code and software

Historical Structure from Motion (HSfM) pre-release v0.1 Friedrich Knuth et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5510870

Short summary

We reconstruct historical topography for a rapidly warming Antarctic region with limited existing data. Using approximately 2000 aerial photographs from the year 1989 over the western Antarctic Peninsula and nearby islands, we created detailed elevation models and orthoimages that have high accuracy compared to recent satellite data. This open dataset aids tracking historical ice loss and its role in sea level rise.