Elements: Making Ice Penetrating Radar More Accessible: A tool for finding, downloading and visualizing georeferenced radargrams within the QGIS ecosystem

元素：使穿冰雷达更容易使用：用于在 QGIS 生态系统中查找、下载和可视化地理参考雷达图的工具

• 批准号: 2209726
• 负责人: Laura Lindzey
• 金额: $ 33.07万
• 依托单位: University of Washington
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-07-15 至 2025-06-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2209726&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Elements; Making; Ice; Penetrating; Radar

Ice penetrating radar is one of the primary tools that researchers use to study ice sheets and glaciers. With radar, it is possible to see a cross-section of the ice, revealing internal layers and the shape of the rocks under the ice. Among other things, this is important for calculating how much potential sea level change is locked up in the polar ice sheets, and how stable the ice sheets are likely to be in a warming world. This type of data is logistically challenging and expensive to collect. Historically, individual research groups have obtained funding to collect these data sets, and then the data largely stayed within that institution. There has been a recent push to make more and more data openly available, enabling the same datasets to be used by multiple research groups. However, it is still difficult to figure out what data is available because there is no centralized index. Additionally, each group releases data in a different format, which creates an additional hurdle to its use. This project addresses both of those challenges to data reuse by providing a unified tool for discovering where ice penetrating radar data already exists, then allowing the researcher to download and visualize the data. It is integrated into open-source mapping software that many in the research community already use, and makes it possible for non-experts to explore these datasets. This is particularly valuable for early-career researchers and for enabling interdisciplinary work.The US alone has spent many tens of millions of dollars on direct grants to enable the acquisition and analysis of polar ice penetrating radar data, and even more on the associated infrastructure and support costs. Unfortunately, much of these data is not publicly released, and even the data that has been released is not easily accessible. There is significant technical work involved in figuring out how to locate, download and view the data. This project is developing a tool that will both lower the barrier to entry for using this data and improve the workflows of existing users. Quantarctica and QGreenland have rapidly become indispensable tools for the polar research community, making diverse data sets readily available to researchers. However, ice penetrating radar is a major category of data that is not currently supported – it is possible to see the locations of existing survey lines, and the ice thickness maps that have been interpreted from their data, but it is not readily possible to see the radargrams themselves in context with all of the other information. This capability is important because there is far more visual information contained in a radargram than simply its interpreted basal elevation or ice thickness. This project is developing software that will enable researchers to to view radargram images and interpreted surface and basal horizons in context with the existing map-view datasets in Quantarctica and QGreenland. A data layer shows the locations of all known ice penetrating radar surveys, color-coded based on availability. This layer enables data discovery and browsing. The plugin itself interacts with the data layer, first to download selected data, then to visualize the radargrams along with a cursor that moves simultaneously along the radargram and along the map view, making it straightforward to determine the precise geolocation of radar features.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

探冰雷达是研究人员用来研究冰盖和冰川的主要工具之一。通过雷达，可以看到冰的横截面，揭示内部层和冰下岩石的形状。 除此之外，这对于计算极地冰盖中潜在的海平面变化有多少，以及冰盖在变暖的世界中可能有多稳定非常重要。此类数据在逻辑上具有挑战性且收集成本昂贵。从历史上看，个别研究小组获得了资金来收集这些数据集，然后数据大部分留在该机构内。最近，人们正在努力公开越来越多的数据，使多个研究小组能够使用相同的数据集。然而，由于没有集中索引，仍然很难弄清楚哪些数据可用。此外，每个组织以不同的格式发布数据，这给其使用带来了额外的障碍。该项目通过提供统一的工具来发现破冰雷达数据已经存在的位置，然后允许研究人员下载和可视化数据，从而解决了数据重用的两个挑战。它已集成到研究社区中许多人已经使用的开源地图软件中，并使非专家也可以探索这些数据集。这对于早期职业研究人员和跨学科工作来说特别有价值。仅美国就花费了数千万美元用于直接拨款，以实现极地冰穿透雷达数据的获取和分析，甚至更多用于相关基础设施和支持成本。不幸的是，这些数据大部分都没有公开发布，甚至已经发布的数据也不容易获取。弄清楚如何定位、下载和查看数据涉及大量的技术工作。该项目正在开发一种工具，既可以降低使用这些数据的门槛，又可以改善现有用户的工作流程。 Quantarctica 和 QGreenland 已迅速成为极地研究界不可或缺的工具，使研究人员可以轻松获得各种数据集。然而，透冰雷达是目前不支持的主要数据类别——可以看到现有测量线的位置以及从其数据中解释的冰厚度图，但不容易在所有其他信息的背景下看到雷达图本身。这种功能很重要，因为雷达图中包含的视觉信息远多于简单解释的基础高程或冰厚度。该项目正在开发软件，使研究人员能够在 Quantarctica 和 QGreenland 现有的地图视图数据集的背景下查看雷达图图像并解释表面和基底地平线。数据层显示所有已知的破冰雷达勘测的位置，并根据可用性进行颜色编码。该层支持数据发现和浏览。该插件本身与数据层交互，首先下载选定的数据，然后将雷达图以及沿着雷达图和地图视图同时移动的光标可视化，从而可以直接确定雷达特征的精确地理位置。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。