GIS of Antarctic Rock Samples

This GIS stores geographical and geological information of the rocks sampled by Italian geologists during the Antarctic expeditions organised by the Italian Programma Nazionale di Ricerche in Antartide (PNRA) since 1985. The samples are maintained at the rock repository of the Italian Antarctic Museum (Earth Science division in Siena).

Location sources are field maps and GPS data, as well as pre-existing GIS projects. The locations have been checked on the basis of the field-book descriptions which are stored in the catalogue database. Most of the map data was digitized using Antarctic Digital Database themes (maintained by the British Antarctic Survey) as a topographic base. In the Mt. Melbourne Quadrangle zone (Victoria Land), instead, a LANDSAT mosaic (provided by M. Frezzotti, ENEA- Roma Casaccia) was used.

Digitized samples are 14,000 (as of February 2007). Their locations are distributed in a broad strip of East Antarctica, i.e. George V Land , Victoria Land, Shackleton Range and Dronning Maud Land.