Antarctica and Southern Ocean basemap for Desktop GIS

We provide a south pole projected Antarctica and Southern Ocean basemap as a web service, which can be loaded in to Desktop GIS.

The basemap is updated every 6 months to reflect changes to the coastline and to include updated elevation and bathymetry data, as appropriate. It is a WMTS service hosted using ArcGIS Online and is also included in the ArcGIS Living Atlas.

This guide will run through how to add it to a QGIS Project.

Demonstration of Antarctica and Southern Ocean basemap

Using the basemap in QGIS

In the main menu, navigate to Layer > Add Layer > Add WMS/WMTS Layer....

Select New to create a new service connection.

Complete the dialogue box as follows, and then click Ok:

1. Tick the 'Ignore axis orientation' box,

2. enter a name, ie. 'Antarctica and Southern Ocean' and

3. enter the following url into the URL box:

https://tiles.arcgis.com/tiles/tPxy1hrFDhJfZ0Mf/arcgis/rest/services/Antarctica_and_the_Southern_Ocean/MapServer/wmts

Connection details dialogue box

Click Connect. Once the service has connected, select the Antarctica and Southern Ocean layer and click Add.

Once you connect to the service, the layer will appear in this list to select and add to your QGIS project

Close the Data Source Manager window, and the basemap will be loaded in to use within the project.