Drone-based ice station orthomosaics in local coordinate systems from the PS149/CONTRASTS expedition in the Arctic Ocean

DOI

This dataset consists of high-resolution airborne orthomosaics of the working areas surrounding the 11 ice stations visited during the PS149/CONTRASTS expedition in the Arctic Ocean between 2nd of July and 1st of September 2025. Mentioned ice stations are comprised of a visit to one of three floes. These floes were located in first-, second-, or multi-year ice respectively. The orthomosaics were generated through photogrammetric processing of airborne RGB imagery using Agisoft Metashape. No brightness corrections were applied. The imagery was acquired during drone surveys conducted in a chessboard-like flight pattern using a DJI Matrice 350 RTK equipped with a DJI Zenmuse H20T camera. A DJI Mavic 3 was used exclusively during the fourth visit to ice station 2 (2d) due to adverse weather conditions. The chessboard-like survey pattern generally consisted of at least two image blocks flown at different altitudes. The first visit to ice station 2 (2a) represents an exception, with observations restricted to a single altitude. Survey parameters, including flight altitude, speed, and image overlap, varied depending on weather conditions and floe drift speed. The orthomosaics are referenced in local coordinate systems defined by black-and-white ground targets deployed on the ice and, where possible, scaled using tachymeter measurements. These coordinate systems were maintained as consistently as possible throughout repeated visits to the ice stations. For surveys in which no ground targets were deployed, target locations were approximated based on their positions during previous visits. Orthomosaics generated under these conditions are marked accordingly.

Identifier
DOI https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.996057
Related Identifier References https://doi.org/10.57738/BZPM_0808_2026
Metadata Access https://ws.pangaea.de/oai/provider?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=datacite4&identifier=oai:pangaea.de:doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.996057
Provenance
Creator Blei, Torben ORCID logo; Fuchs, Niels ORCID logo; Birnbaum, Gerit ORCID logo; Neckel, Niklas ORCID logo
Publisher PANGAEA
Publication Year 2026
Funding Reference Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven https://doi.org/10.13039/501100003207 Crossref Funder ID AWI_PS149_01 Sea Ice Physics (CONTRASTS)
Rights Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
OpenAccess true
Representation
Resource Type Dataset
Format text/tab-separated-values
Size 59 data points
Discipline Earth System Research
Spatial Coverage (-17.902W, 82.389S, 33.731E, 84.780N)
Temporal Coverage Begin 2025-07-09T07:10:00Z
Temporal Coverage End 2025-08-27T15:24:00Z