The SCAR King George Island GIS (KGIS) Project

Steffen Vogt
Institut f. Physische Geographie
Albert-Ludwigs-Universitaet Freiburg
Werderring 4, D-79085 Freiburg, Germany
email: steffen.vogt@geographie.uni-freiburg.de

Probably nowhere else in Antarctica is the need for coordinated approaches in research activities and environmental management more evident than on King George Island. This is reflected by the recommendation of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) adopted at the XXVIth Meeting of SCAR in Tokyo, July 2000, which calls for efforts to integrate scientific objectives and for collaboration among the nations working on the island. The King George Island GIS (KGIS) project provides a fundamental contribution to these endeavors.

The project makes available an integrated geographic database for use by all countries and by researchers in many disciplines. It is coordinated under the Geographic Information Program of the SCAR Geospatial Information Group. Currently the project is hosted at and coordinated by Institut f. Physische Geographie, University Freiburg, Germany.

The KGIS Mapviewer provides an intuitive, interactive multi-lingual and spatially enabled online interface to databases describing Antarctic fauna and flora and other features on King George Island. Researchers can follow the link to the KGIS Mapviewer to explore the data or create and print their own customized, high resolution maps of the island. Thirteen layers of data are served up by a server that implements the Web Map Service specification. Any  client implementing WMS can connect to the OGC WMS that presents the KGIS data. The connection string to the KGIS Web Map Service is:
http://www.geographie.uni-freiburg.de/cgi-bin/mapserv?map=/web/mapserver/kgis/WMS.map&

Figure 1 (left): Overview on the inner Maxwell Bay. The buildings form part of the Russian and Chilean bases on King George Island. The lake in the foreground serves as freshwater supply to the Chilean base. Photo: Steffen Vogt (2001)

About King George Island

King George Island is one of the South Shetland Islands. It is located close to the Northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. Cape Horn (South America) is about 1200 km to the North. The island is dominated by a huge ice cap. More than 90% of the island is glaciated.

Figure 2 (left): A Brazilian-German team of glaciologists preparing for another day of work 600m above Admiralty Bay, King George Island. The island's ice cap is said to be highly sensitive to climate changes and is the object of a variety of research projects related to glacial mass balance studies. Photo: Steffen Vogt (1997)

The ice-free areas and coastal zones of the island support diverse plant and animal life. Penguins, seals, petrels and comparably rich vegetation make the island's natural environment not only a favorite for tourist cruises, but King George Island has also the greatest concentration of multinational research activities in Antarctica. Human activities on the island are based at nine permanent stations and an airstrip maintained by the Chilean air force.

Human activities on King George Island started as early as 1819 with the first sealers arriving. After a few years the fur seal and sea elephant populations on the island were almost completely extinguished. At the beginning of the twentieth century, whalers used the island's natural harbors and sheltered beaches, and at many of these sites whale bones can still be found. Today, again, human activities have severe impacts on the vulnerable ecosystems of the island. Coordinated environmental management is essential for conservation of the sensitive ecosystems.

Figure 3: Colonies of Chinstrap penguins (Pygoscelis antarctica) can be found all along the coast of King George Island and on the surrounding isles. Chinstrap penguins are the second-most abundant penguin species in the Antarctic and sub-Antarctic regions. Photo: Steffen Vogt (1997)