ABSTRACT:
In the early phase of a project organized by the Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority (NRPA) dealing with monitoring of
radioactive radiation from nuclear waste deposited at the former naval station Andreeva Bay in northwest Russia, a suitable base
map at a scale sufficiently large to be used as a georeferencing tool for radiation measurements and also as a background map for
presentations, was not available. It was therefore decided to use high resolution satellite imagery for this purpose, and a
collaboration with the Geomatics section – IMT at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (UMB), was established.A Landsat-7
ETM+ precision corrected scene from the USGS 15 meter resolution data collection was used as a basis for a georeference
adjustment of a system corrected QuickBird sub-scene. By establishing an adequate transformations based on Ground Control
Points (GCPs), between the adjusted QuickBird sub-scene and a local grid, it was possible to locate the original radioactive
radiation measurements with acceptable precision within the UTM Sone 36 N WGS84 geographical reference frame.At a later stage
of the project, after the Satellite Image Map preparation, a digital version in raster format of a russian topographic map sheet at
scale 1:50 000 became available. This dataset offered a possibility for the assessment of the combined Landsat-7 ETM+ /
QuickBird rectification, and in addition an opportunity for an assessment of the influence of the terrain elevation on the geometry of
the rectified satellite image.