Displays

The standardization of cartographic methods and data products is critical for accurate and precise analysis and scientific reporting. This is more relevant today than ever before, as researchers have easy access to a magnitude of digital data as well as to the tools to process and analyze these various products. The life cycle of cartographic products can be short and standardized descriptions are needed to keep track of different developments.

Planetary Cartography does not only provide the basis to support planning (e.g., landing-site selection, orbital observations, traverse planning) and to facilitate mission conduct during the lifetime of a mission (e.g., observation tracking and hazard avoidance). It also provides the means to create science products after successful termination of a planetary mission by distilling data into maps and map-related products. After a mission’s lifetime, data and higher level products such as mosaics and digital terrain models (DTMs) are stored in archives and are eventually re-used and transformed into maps and higher-level data products to provide a new basis for research and for new scientific and engineering studies. The complexity of such tasks increases with every new dataset that has been put on this stack of information, and in the same way as the complexity of autonomous probes increases, also tools that support these challenges require new levels of sophistication. In the planetary sciences, cartography and mapping have a history dating back to the roots of telescopic space exploration and are now facing new technological and organizational challenges with the rise of innovative missions, improved instruments, global data initiatives, new organizations and opening research markets. A general aim for this Planetary Cartography community is to develop concepts and approaches to foster future cooperation between scientists, cartographers and non-cartographers.

The focus of this contribution is to summarize recent activities in Planetary Cartography, highlighting current issues the community is facing, and to derive future opportunities in this field in order to address technical and scientific objectives. Furthermore, we focus on (1) identifying and prioritizing needs of the planetary cartography community along with a strategic timeline to accomplish such goals, (2) keeping track of ongoing work across the globe in the field of Planetary Cartography, and (3) identifying areas of evolving technologies and innovations that deal with mapping strategies as well as output media for the dissemination and communication of cartographic results.

By this we would like to invite cartographers, researchers and map-enthusiasts to join this community and to start thinking about how we can jointly solve some of these challenges.

How to cite: Naß, A., van Gasselt, S., Di, K., Hare, T., Karachevtseva, I., Rossi, A. P., Skinner, J., Kersten, E., Elgner, S., Manaud, N., and Roatsch, T.: Beyond Earth – Lessons learned and Challenges of Planetary Cartography , EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-13023, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-13023, 2020.

The project of the International Quaternary Map of Europe project (IQUAME 2500) is a major international initiative coordinated by BGR under the auspices of the CGMW (Commission of the Geological Map of the Word, Sub-Commission Europe) and with support of INQUA (International Union for Quaternary Research). It started in 2011 at the INQUA congress in Bern and aims to show the distribution of Quaternary features at the land surface and general marine deposits across the entire European continent. The map is planned as web-based geographical information system (GIS) and is going to include the Quaternary on- and off-shore information on e.g. glaciogenic elements, geomorphologic features, age and lithology of Quaternary units, last extent of ice sheets (Weichselian, Saalian, if possible Elsterian), faults, active faults off-shore Quaternary information (in cooperation with the European Union EMODnet Geology project) and more.

Partner institutions from more than 30 countries including geological survey organisations from Russia in the East, Portugal in the West, Norway in the North and Cyprus in the South are participating; a scientific board of Quaternary researchers ensures the high scientific quality of resulting map. For a multinational and cross-boundary project like this, international collaboration is the key to success. This project requires that data originally set up in a plethora of regional and national classifications need to be adapted, integrated and harmonized in respect to semantics, structure and geometry. To achieve this aim common rules needed to used such as those defined by the European INSPIRE Directive or be set up and applied by all participants:  structured vocabularies (incl. definitions of terms) to describe the above contents, cartographic guidelines to suite the scale and last but not least generally applicable tools to aid the partners to submit their data to the project.

Ultimately, the aim is to create an pan-European, internationally harmonized, comprehensive, spatial geological database where relevant properties of the Quaternary layers can be retrieved, combined, selected and cross-referenced across political boundaries and also to provide a summary of the current status of European Quaternary geological research.

Looking at planetary mapping, e.g. of Mars and Moon, there are several similarities. The surfaces of terrestrial planets are shaped by geologic processes that are similar to those operating on Earth, therefore endogenic and exogenic landforms (such as lava flows, glacial deposits, and impact craters) are regularly mapped by the scientific community.  Beside specific scientific mapping projects conducted by individual researchers and groups different organisations and institutes are producing planetary maps, such as NASA, ESA, ROSCOSMOS and MIIGAiK (Russia), USGS (USA), CAS/NOAC/SGCAS/RADI (China), DLR (Germany), or the British Ordnance Survey. This presentation aims to introduce the small-scale Quaternary mapping of one part of planet Earth, i.e. Europe, to present its collaborative aspects, to highlight the parallels to planetary mapping and to suggest potentially useful aspects for planetary geological mapping projects.

How to cite: Asch, K., Naß, A., and van Gasselt, S.: Under the ice and over the sky – aspects of building the International Quaternary Map of Europe and potentially useful parallels to planetary geological map projects, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-22610, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-22610, 2020.

Geologic mapping is a key element of planetary exploration for mission planning, orbital and rover reconnaissance, and target selection for in-situ analysis and sample return, as well as for understanding the formation and evolution of planetary surfaces. The PLANMAP project (http://www.planmap.eu) aims at produce high-level, standardized geological maps of the Moon, Mars, and Mercury (Massironi M. et al., 2018). The project is integrating different types of data as images, spectral-cubes, chemical data, Digital Terrain Models and three-dimensional geological models to produce geological maps suitable to planetary exploration at different levels. The process results in rich datasets composed by a variety of datatypes encapsulated in open standards and released to the community as freely accessible packages (https://maps.planmap.eu).
To accomplish the complexity of deploying PLANMAP packages, considering reliability and automation as key components of a data release workflow, we arranged a data management framework respecting the FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable) guidelines. Geographic data are stored and served by a multi-layered Web-GIS allowing easy information discovery. Particular attention has been paid in designing the user interface and in the definition of the underlying data structure. Different data query services are also provided to properly address different user needs (Luzzi E. et al., 2020). PLANMAP’s datasets can be downloaded in the form of fully contained packages (https://data.planmap.eu) fulfilling a specifically designed standard. Once a data package is ready for publication, validation and summary information extraction take place and the results are published together within the packages.
We will here present an overview of the PLANMAP’s deployed data system, and the technical solutions that were adopted with the final goal of improving the quality standards of planetary geological maps.

References:

- Luzzi E. et al., 2020, “Tectono-magmatic, Sedimentary and Hydrothermal History of Arsinoes and Pyrrhae Chaos, Mars.”, EarthArXiv, doi:10.31223/osf.io/td297

- Massironi M. et al., 2018, “Towards integrated geological maps and 3D geo-models of planetary surfaces: the H2020 PLANetary MAPping project”, EGU General Assembly 2018

How to cite: Brandt, C. H., Rossi, A. P., Penasa, L., Pozzobon, R., Luzzi, E., Wright, J., Carli, C., and Massironi, M.: PLANMAP data packaging: lessons learned towards FAIR planetary geologic maps, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-18839, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-18839, 2020.

There is no perfect global map projection. A projection may be area preserving or conformal (shape preserving on small scales) in some regions, but it will inevitably exhibit considerable distortions in others. An oblique version of a projection (where the globe is rotated before projecting) can be optimized to avoid major distortions in specific regions of interest.
We present two global map projections of the Earth which either display all continents (including Antarctica) or the complete world ocean with minimal distortion and without any intersection. These are the triptychial projection and the Spilhaus projection, respectively.
The triptychial projection is original work and has been published by Grieger (2019). While that paper comprises complete information on the definition of the projection, the details of its application need to be collected from literature referenced therein. The triptychial projection is an oblique and rearranged version of the Peirce quincuncial projection of the world (Peirce, 1879).
Instances of the Spilhaus projection went viral on the internet in fall 2018. The projection is mostly attributed to a publication from 1942, but in fact it seems to appear for the first time in Spilhaus (1979). The projection is shown in that paper (and in a few later ones), but no information on its definition is provided. Developers of ArcGIS did some reverse engineering and could identify the Spilhaus projection as an oblique version of the Adams projection of the world in a square II (Adams, 1929).
The triptychial and the Spilhaus projection both imply several steps in their application. While the two projections look very different, they have one step in common: the conformal mapping of a hemisphere onto a square, which requires tabulated Jacobi elliptic functions. We review both projections, describe them in full detail, and provide all formulas and data needed to apply them. The algorithms employed may also be interesting for planetary applications.

How to cite: Grieger, B.: Optimized global map projections for specific applications: the triptychial projection and the Spilhaus projection, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-9885, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-9885, 2020.

Studying and mapping of faults in the Earth’s crust is one of the priority objectives in structural geology and tectonophysics. Generally, faults are associated with mineral deposits, thermal springs, and earthquakes, and fault zones are areas of the most dangerous geological processes and various geophysical anomalies. In this regard, databases of faults are highly demanded by both science and practical applications. In this work, we present an on-line geospatial database containing faults, which were active in the Pliocene‐Quaternary within the territory between 96–124°E to 49–58°N. The locations of the faults were mapped with using MapInfo GIS based on the extensive analysis of cartographic, published and own structural materials. The data about each fault were input via ActiveTectonics Information System developed by us. The interactive version of the database put out in the open (http://www.activetectonics.ru/) in Russian and English and anyone may get available information about a fault by a click. The geoportal is constantly developing and constitutes a base for the creation of an automated system for modeling geological hazards (seismic soil liquefaction, secondary rupturing, subsidence and slope processes) in the Baikal region.

Currently, as part of the modernization of the ActiveTectonics geographic information product, we are developing models and schemes of data and metadata to create a detailed geospatial database of seismogenic ruptures of the Baikal region. A modern user-friendly interface is being developed to automate the data collection process.

The creation of such a publicly accessible catalog of seismogenic ruptures will be useful for applied and fundamental research.

The reported study was partly funded by RFBR and the Government of the Irkutsk Region, project number 20-45-385001.

How to cite: Gladkov, A. and Oxana, L.: Upgrade of the “ActiveTectonics” on-line database of Pliocene-Quaternary fautls in the Baikal Region and adjacent areas, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-12450, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-12450, 2020.

Impact craters are used to determine the ages of planetary surfaces. Absolute dating of meteorites or in situ geochronology provide a few essential reference points, but these techniques are rare and not yet applicable at the planetary scale. Therefore, impact crater counting techniques will remain the major tool to decipher planetary surface history. This approach requires a tedious mapping and morphological inspection of a large number of circular features to distinguish true and primary impact craters. The most complete database of Martian craters includes a catalog of more than 384,000 impact structures larger than 1 km in diameter. This database is considered to be complete for this diameter range. A requirement to determine young surface ages on Mars must include smaller impact craters, typically a hundred meters in diameter, found on the area of interest.

To access to the crater population of this size range at a planetary scale we built a Crater Detection Algorithm (CDA) trained on THEMIS images where impact craters larger than 1 km from the Robbins & Hynek database have been identified. Our model offer a true detection rate of 0.9. We then applied our CDA on the global CTX mosaic within the ±45º latitudinal band leading to ~17 million of detection >100m in diameter.

The ultimate goal of our work is now to automatically compile smaller impact craters (5m<D<100m) visible on HiRISE imagery dataset offering a resolution of 25cm/px. We trained our algorithm on a part of the HiRISE mosaic (NASA/JPL/MSSS/The Murray Lab) covering a part of the Jezero crater (E77-5_N18_0) where 1650 craters have been manually identified. A portion of this population of craters has then be selected in order to be sure to include the most confident impact features in the training dataset, finally resulting to 1624 craters over this entire image.

Our model has been applied over the entire HiRISE mosaic covering the Jezero crater where more than 27,298 craters >3m have been detected. In order to validate our results, we compared the detection obtained on 30 tiles of 960px x 960px randomly chosen on a part of the mosaic (E77-25_N18-25) which have not been included into the training dataset with a manual identification, thus constituting the ground truth. For this purpose, we decided to categorize each tile according to the type of terrain mostly represented on each of them: rocky terrain, smooth terrain and dunes fields. We have also specified when the image exhibited some vertical stripes leading to the fourth category.

On rocky and smooth terrains, the CDA produce very good results: only 5% of detection on the average are false detection and 16% of craters on average have not been detected by the CDA. However, the CDA is less efficient on dune fields since 35% of detection are false detection and 15% of craters have not been identified. Finally, images exhibiting some vertical stripes significantly decrease the detection rate of the CDA since 56% of detection are false negative and 20% of craters have not been detected.

How to cite: Servis, K., Lagain, A., Benedix, G., Flannery, D., Norman, C., Towner, M., and Paxman, J.: Automatic crater detection over the Jezero crater area from HiRISE imagery, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-6269, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-6269, 2020.

The NASA Mars Orbital Laser Altimeter (MOLA) Digital Terrain Model (DTM) has the greatest coverage available for Mars with an average resolution of 463 m/pixel (128pixel/ degree) globally and 112 m/ pixel (512 pixels/degree) for the polar regions [1]. The ESA Mars Express High-Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) is currently orbiting Mars and continuously mapping the surface, 98% with resolutions finer than 100 m/pixel, and 100% at lower resolutions [2]. Previously, 50m/pixel DTMs were produced using a NASA-VICAR-based pipeline developed by the German Aerospace Centre, with modifications from Kim and Muller [3] for the south polar region, using an image matcher based on the Gruen-Otto-Chau (Gotcha) algorithm [4].

In this research, we demonstrate application of the same method to the North Polar [5] region. Forty single strip DTMs have been processed and corrected to produce a north polar HRSC DTM mosaic at 50m/pixel. The assessment of the dataset to MOLA will be discussed. Moreover, a large number (~50) of the North polar HRSC images are co-registered and orthorectified using the DTM mosaic. We also demonstrate observations of the seasonal ice cap growth and retreat using the orthorectified images for Martian Year (MY) 27-32. In addition, the results for MY28-31 are compared against the observations from the Mars Colour Imager (MARCI)[6].

 
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: Part of the research leading to these results has received partial funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under iMars grant agreement n ̊ 607379; The first author is supported by the Indonesian Endowment Fund for Education. We would also like to express gratitude to the HRSC team and the MOLA team for the usage of HRSC and MOLA data, and Alexander Dumke for the exterior orientation processing results used within this research.

[1] Smith, David, et al. 2001. “Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter: Experiment summary after the first year of global mapping of Mars.” Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets 106(E10):23689–23722

[2] Gwinner, et al. 2016. “The High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) of Mars Express and Its Approach to Science Analysis and Mapping for Mars and Its Satellites.” Planetary and Space Science 126:93–138

[3] Kim and J-P. Muller, 2009. “Multi-resolution topographic data extraction from Martian stereo imagery.” Planetary and Space Science, 57(14-15):2095-2112.

[4] D. Shin and J-P. Muller, 2012. “Progressively weighted adaptive correlation matching for quasi-dense 3d reconstruction.” Pattern Recognition, 45(10):3795-3809.

[5] Putri, A.R.D., et al., 2019. “A New South Polar Digital Terrain Model of Mars from the High-Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) onboard the ESA Mars Express.” Planetary and Space Science.

[6] Calvin, W.M., et al., 2015. “Interannual and seasonal changes in the north polar ice deposits of Mars: Observations from MY 29–31 using MARCI.” Icarus, 251, pp.181-190.

How to cite: Putri, A. R. D., Tao, Y., and Muller, J.-P.: HRSC 3D Image products of the North Polar Layered Terrain of Mars, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-19072, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-19072, 2020.

OpenPlanetaryMap (OPM) is a collaborative project to build the first Open Planetary Mapping and Social platform for researchers, educators, storytellers, and the general public. We want to make it easy for anyone to create and share maps and locations on any planets or bodies in our Solar System [1].

Our platform architecture is based on four main service-oriented components: (1) an open repository of geospatial datasets; containing information used to create basemaps and to enable location-based searches, (2) basemaps that are needed to build any types of web mapping applications or geospatial data visualisation, (3) geocoding and geo-referencing APIs/web services to enable location-based searches and crowdsourcing of our datasets repository, (4) Web app, Python module and CLI interfaces to search, add and share places on planetary bodies.

Since the project started as an initiative funded by Europlanet in 2017, we have consolidated our network of collaborators and we published our first planetary basemaps and design concept [2]. Instructions on how to use our basemaps are available from our new website [3]. External projects have started to use OPM basemaps, for example: PLANMAP Stories [4] and CaSSIS Map Interface [5]. While we continue to improve our basemaps and create new ones, we have been working on providing an open planetary geocoding API/web service and user interfaces.

The purpose of our planetary geocoding API is to provide a common and consistent way of defining and searching for places on the surface of bodies in the Solar System, including the Earth. We are first implementing our geocoding API as a JavaScript module, along with our first web map interface that demonstrates its use. We will then focus on implementing our geocoding API as a Python module.

We introduce the project and present recent updates on OPM planetary basemaps, geocoding APIs and user interfaces.

[1] Manaud et al. (2018). OpenPlanetaryMap: Building the first Open Planetary Mapping and Social platform for researchers, educators, storytellers, and the general public. European Planetary Science Congress 2018, 12, EPSC2018-78. [2] Nass et al. (2019). Towards a new face for Planetary Maps: Design and web- based Implementation of Planetary Basemaps. Adv. Cartogr. GIScience Int. Cartogr. Assoc., 1, 15, 2019. https://doi.org/10.5194/ica-adv-1-15-2019 [3] http://openplanetarymap.org [4] https://stories.planmap.eu/mars/gale [5] http://cassis.halimede.unibe.ch

How to cite: Manaud, N., Gasperi, J., Nass, A., van Gasselt, S., Pio Rossi, A., and Hare, T.: OpenPlanetaryMap Updates: Planetary Basemaps and Geocoding Web Services, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-3427, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-3427, 2020.

The numerous past and present space missions dedicated to the Solar System planetary bodies exploration, provided a huge amount of data so far. In particular, data acquired by cameras and spectrometers allowed for producing morpho-stratigraphic and mineralogical maps for many planets, satellites and minor bodies. Despite the considerable progresses, the integration of these products is still poorly addressed. To date, no geological maps of planetary bodies other than the Earth, containing both the information, are available yet. In this context, one of the main goals the “European Union's Horizon 2020 - PLANetary MAPping (PLANMAP)” project [1] is to provide, for the first time, highly informative geological maps of specific regions of interest on the Moon, Mercury and Mars, taking into account datasets publicly available in the Planetary Data System (PDS) database [2].

Here, we show the results achieved during the first two years of the project by the PLANMAP “Compositional unit definition Work Package”. In particular, we focused on specific areas, such as Hokusai quadrangle (22°-60° N, 0°-90°W) and Beethoven (13.24°S- 28.39° S; 116.1°- 132.32°W, 630 km diameter) and Rembrandt (24.58°S- 41.19°S, 261.72°- 282.73°W, 716 km diameter) basins on Mercury, and the Apollo basin (10 ° –60 ° S, 125 ° –175 ° W, 492 km diameter) within the northeastern edge of the ~ 2500 km South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin on the Moon [3]. For this work, we considered the multi-color images acquired by the Mercury Dual Imaging System - Wide Angle Camera (MDIS-WAC) [3] onboard the MESSENGER mission and hyperspectral data provided by the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) [4] onboard the Chandrayaan-1 mission. After data calibration and the instrumental artifacts removal, we have photometrically corrected the data to derive multi- and hyper-spectral reflectance maps, afterwards we defined appropriate spectral indices to eventually obtain the spectral unit maps of these regions of interest. In next step, we will integrate the spectral unit maps obtained with the morpho-stratigraphic ones provided by other PLANMAP work packages [5, 6, 7] to merge the information and finally retrieve geological units.

This work is funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research grant agreement No 776276- PLANMAP and by the Italian Space Agency (ASI) within the SIMBIO-SYS project (ASI-INAF agreement 2017-47-H).

References

[1] https://planmap.eu/

[2] https://pds.nasa.gov/

[3] S. Edward Hawkins III et al., 2007, Space Science Reviews, 131, 247–338.

[4] Pieters, C. E. et al., 2009, CURRENT SCIENCE, 96 (4).

[5] Brandt, C. et al., 2020 EGU General Assembly 2020.

[6] Ivanov, M.A., et al., 2018, Journal of Geophysical Research, 123 (10), 2585-2612.

[7] Wright, J., et al., 2019, 50^th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference.

How to cite: Carli, C., Zambon, F., Altieri, F., Brandt, C., Rossi, A. P., and Massironi, M.: Intergrating morpho-stratigraphic and spectral units on Mercury and the Moon: Updates from the PLANMAP project, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-19741, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-19741, 2020.

As part of USGS Astrogeology’s ongoing efforts to support planetary spatial data infrastructures (PSDI), this extension seeks to codify common descriptions of planetary geoscience data that do not have an equivalence in the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata (CSDGM) core standard [1, 2]. This profile will be submitted for adoption by the FGDC so that it may be used by the community and will be revised as necessary to ensure it remains useful to the broadest base of planetary scientists.

Those active in supporting metadata efforts will point out that many users of FGDC CSDGM are transitioning to the more robust International Standards Organization (ISO) geospatial data standards, which is also officially endorsed by FGDC itself. Fortunately, the USGS is actively leading in this migration, but it is expected to take years, and support for the current FGDC CSDGM standard remains widespread.  

The basis for our proposed <solarsys> metadata extension is the need to 1) represent planetary coordinate reference systems and 2) capture supplemental fields unique to planetary science. Many of these fields are used in Astrogeology’s Astropedia, which has evolved over years to support the discovery of a wide variety of planetary data products, from global mosaics to rover observations [3].

It is the recommendation of these authors that a group representative of the broader planetary science community should assume stewardship of the metadata profile so that it can be of greatest accessibility and use, and be responsive to changes needed by the user base.

The first plans are to work with USGS developers of the Metadata Wizard Toolkit to integrate the extension along with controlled vocabularies for planetary bodies, space exploration missions and their instruments [4]. This will also posture the project to participate in the transition from FGDC to ISO. The authors encourage European colleagues who wish to develop a complementary profile with ISO or another standards body to collaborate with USGS. Maintaining alignment during the developmental phase will both accelerate progress and promote interoperability as they are put into use.

How to cite: Hunter, M., Bailen, M., and Hare, T.: A Proposed Planetary Extension for FGDC Geospatial Metadata, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-11206, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-11206, 2020.

Channel morphologies are sinuous, negative-relief linear forms that form by a current of water or lava. They may be fluvial or volcanic in origin. Channels are exclusively volcanic on Venus, volcanic or fluvial on Mars and fluvial on Titan. On Venus and Mars, channels are all paleoforms while on Titan (and Earth) they are actively forming. Channels may be hosted by valleys, that represent the cumulative erosional history of the embedded channel. They may be singular or may form braided pattern separated by streamlined island forms (e.g., Kasei Valles); a channel floor may host interior channels (e.g., Navua Valles), and channels may disappear gradually into flat plains (e.g., Simud Vallis). These are just a few of their characteristics that make their cartographic representation a complex issue.

In this work we analyzed and compared the symbology of channel forms in planetary geologic maps. An ongoing work on planetary geologic symbology identified 95 maps containing channel symbols in a total of 154 map (Nass et al. 2017b). Symbology is important for several reasons (Nass et al. 2011, Nass et al. 2017a). Although each map is complete on its own, standardized symbology enables direct comparison between maps. Maps are used for measurements: channel morphometry measurements across different quadrangles become problematic if symbols are used and defined differently.

Planetary geologic maps use three classes of symbols for representing channel forms: polygons as geologic units, polygons as surficial units laid over a geologic unit and line symbols for smaller channels. Line symbols often transform to geologic units when they reach a cutoff size for the used map scale. Line symbols do not continue over the unit symbols. This way drainage networks are split into two, incompatible symbol types. The cutoff size is often not reported in the legend that use the vague "narrow channels" designation for the line symbols. Sometimes line symbols are used only for "small distributary channels" or "small valleys".

Named channel units may be grouped geographically (e.g., Ares Vallis), by age (e.g., Hesperian channels), by morphology (steep walled channels), process (outflow channels) or as true geologic units (vallis floor sediments). These categories may be even mixed within one map.

The line symbols are typically solid blue (cyan) lines. This is in accordance with FGDC standards (FGDC 2006).

Different problems arise with drainage databases (Hynek et al. 2010, Alemanno et al. 2018). They typically uniformly trace dendritic valley networks, but they also contain singular and other channel forms, whereas "outflow channels" and lava channels are missing from these databases. The global map of Tanaka et al. (2014) uses two different blue line symbols for "channel axis" (i.e., valley network and some outflow-like channels) and "outflow channels".

It is needed to redefine channel form classification in the planetary domain and symbology (from Venus to Mars to Titan) and make it clear for mappers if different symbols should be used for different sizes, origins, and morphologies and how different symbols may be combined in one map.

How to cite: Hargitai, H.: Cartographic Representation of Channel Forms on Planetary Geologic Maps, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-20298, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-20298, 2020.

The gsymblib brings symbols and patterns useful in the earth and planetary geological mapping into QGIS, the desktop GIS application from the OSGeo geospatial software stack. Styling for points, lines, fill patterns and gradients are included.   Apart from the symbols' library,  gsymblib offers a build mechanism that allows to incrementally add and update symbols of the library.  This way, even small contributions will enhance the size and quality of the library.  The project is currently hosted and developed on Github at https://github.com/afrigeri/geologic-symbols-qgis, where the uses can choose to download only the symbols' library or the entire development environment to implement new symbols and contribute back to the project.  Currently, the library includes more than 100 user-contributed symbols and patterns defined by the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) for planetary geologic mapping, but others from different mapping authorities/institutions can be added. 

How to cite: Frigeri, A.: gsymblib: Geologic symbols library and development for QGIS, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-22625, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-22625, 2020.

This session will focus on Indexed 3D Scene Layers (I3S) and its evolution, as an OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) community Standard. I3S enables the storage and streaming of massive amounts of heterogeneously distributed geospatial content, in the form of millions of discrete 3D objects with attributes, integrated surface meshes and point cloud data covering vast geographic areas, to web browsers, mobile apps and desktop.

Ability to stream millions of triangles and billions of point cloud, regardless of platform constraints, has opened a new 3D graphics and visual computing front in the geospatial world, where there is an increasing demand for high quality 3D application.

In this session, we will describe principles and concepts for organizing geospatial data based on bounding volume hierarchy (BVH), various spatial subdivision algorithms, efficient mesh representation, as well as exploring point cloud, mesh and texture compression/decompression techniques, while keeping the content friendly to GPUs. We will also demonstrate various examples of the different layer types and profiles that are supported in I3S and how the data structure and organization help to efficiently store segmentation/classification information as well as triangle/point level attribution.

Technological advancements in 3D graphics, data structuring, mesh and texture compression, efficient client-side filtering and so forth have significantly contributed to a paradigm shift in how geospatial content is created and disseminated, regardless of size and scale. Formats such as I3S now allow 3d content to be authored/created once and be efficiently consumed in various platforms including desktop, web and mobile for both offline and online access. This phenomenon – create once and consume everywhere model, has encouraged the dissemination and sharing of geospatial content for both planetary (whole earth) and planar 3D visualization experiences.

The session will show case numerous examples (for desktop, web and mobile experience) illustrating the many advancements made in geospatial technologies that are ripe to be embraced in various geoscience disciplines.

The I3S specification was released as a free and open standard by Esri and has been adopted as an OGC community standard for the past 2 and half years and is evolving vastly with many use cases.

How to cite: Belayneh, T.: I3S - an open standard for 3D GIS visualization on Web, Desktop and Mobile Platforms, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-13542, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-13542, 2020.

How to cite: Grotheer, E. and Manaud, N. and the ESA PSA and MEX SGS teams: New search capabilities based on observational geometry for Mars Express data in the ESA’s Planetary Science Archive, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-20093, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-20093, 2020.

Since the mid 1990s, off-the-shelf Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have been increasingly accepted as essential tools for data management, data analysis and visualization in the planetary sciences, in particular in planetary surface studies.

With that advance, small homebrew and niche solutions have been slowly abandoned in favor of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) and established free and open-source software (FOSS) which are capable of providing a wide range of generic analyses tools.

This transition has likely been facilitated by three contemporaneous developments:

1. the integrability and provision of planetary spheroid specifications with arbitrary radii definitions,
2. the possibility to ingest planetary data in their native formats or to be able to use tools exporting data into common formats,
3. the need to be able to ingest and co-register data at medium low (>200 m) as well as highest resolution (<5 m) at the same time as well as the need to make extensive use of digital terrain model analyses. These needs resulted from the release of data with varying spatial and temporal resolution initiated in the course of the Mars Global Surveyor mission.

To no surprise, user demands have been increasing over the last two decades due to high data-volume returns from Mars, the Moon and from Saturn’s satellites.

This particular development as well as an education which has been increasingly centered on spatial awareness helped shaping the landscape of spatial data management, data analysis and visualization supported by GIS technology. New challenges in these fields currently arise while other challenges just became more apparent and have been ghosting around for over 30 years without being solved thus far. Some of the new challenges evolve around the obvious need to be able to integrate large amounts of variable data, not only in terms of storing and managing, but also with respect to extracting meaningful information with purposeful tools as well as with respect to visualization. While the exponential data growth and the need for more sophisticated tools did certainly not come as a surprise, innovation and solutions to cope with such a demand lag far behind.

Open standards and stable interfaces allowing to extend functionalities have been demanded and discussed as essential challenge in GIS development for more than 30 years, and yet, “open data” has seemingly only recently become a market “vision”, and the future will show if interoperability will become bidirectional at the end. The relatively small planetary sciences community will need to come up (and has come up) with their own tools to extend GIS functionalities although that experience might be hampered by ever-changing interface specifications with new GIS releases rendering updates unsustainable on the long run. Other challenges, e.g., cartography of irregular bodies, cannot be addressed using additional tools as they target the very core of contemporary GIS tools.

In this presentation we will summarize and discuss recent challenges in Planetary GIS and focus on perspectives within a currently changing GIS landscape and try to address potential solutions and bypasses.

How to cite: van Gasselt, S. and Nass, A.: Planetary GIS – Review and the Road ahead, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-19961, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-19961, 2020.