Introduction

In spring of 2002, the National Science Foundation’s Arctic Logistics and Research Support Program funded the acquisition and distribution of a new Digital Elevation Model (DEM) of the Kuparuk River watershed in Arctic Alaska. This grant (NSF OPP-0207220) was awarded to Dr. Matt Nolan at the Water and Environmental Research Center (WERC) at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF). Funding for some of the analyses was also provided by the International Arctic Research Center (IARC) at UAF. This set of eight DVDs is the result of that project. Access to these data are authorized only to scientists working on projects funded by the National Science Foundation. Please contact Dr. Simon Stephenson at the NSF (sstephen@nsf.gov) if you have any questions regarding your eligibility.

If you are new to DEM research, a good starting place is perhaps a copy of the NSF proposal that funded this research. This proposal explains DEMs, a number of potential applications, and goes into detail on the Star3i acquisition system and some of its limitations. OrthoRectified Radar Images (ORRIs), an image acquired simultaneously with the DEM, are also described there. If you would like to learn more about the Star3i acquisition system, there is a user guide and many papers available in the library. If you are already experienced with DEM research and are interested in learning more, this book is an excellent reference: Digital Elevation Model Technologies and Applications ISBN 1-57083-064-9. If you just want to start working with the data, follow the links on the left to locate the appropriate disk and have fun!