San Francisco, California, USA -- Working alongside individuals in Antarctica, the community knowledge
non-profit LocalWiki (http://localwiki.org) is proud to announce the
public unveiling of a new LocalWiki project for the Antarctic
continent.  The first of its kind, the project aims to document the
full extent of human involvement on the continent.  The effort, named
Open Antarctica, is initially focused on a region of roughly 2 miles
surrounding the Palmer Station United States base on the Antarctic
Peninsula.

Central to the project is a one-of-a-kind map, custom-designed by the
LocalWiki team, that shows the region, and Antarctica as a whole, like
never seen before.  Drawing from otherwise difficult-to-access NASA
aerial photography and research data, the map gives a glimpse into an
otherwise hidden world.

The LocalWiki platform allows collaborators to share descriptions,
anecdotes, or technical explanations along with photographs and even
videos and tie them to geographic locations. Together, these pages
form an annotated, richly-storied map where every type of participant,
from support personnel to scientists, tour guides, and others, has an
equal and uncensored opportunity to share his or her role in the
ongoing story of life in the Antarctic.

Please see our blog post for more information as well as links to the map:

http://localwiki.org/blog/ 2012/oct/10/localwiki- antarctica/

About Open Antarctica:

Open Antarctica is a collaborative mapping project that makes the full
extent of human involvement on the continent visible to the world. The
project works with support personnel who live and work on the
continent to add ecological, cultural, and historical information to
the area around their research stations using LocalWiki, aerial
photography and other visual media. We also help scientific
organizations working at those stations to present the findings of
that research in ways accessible to the public.  Public outreach and
ongoing education in scientific matters is a growing concern to us
all, and Open Antarctica exists as a means to address it.

About LocalWiki:

LocalWiki (http://localwiki.org) is the open-source, open-content
effort to share the world=92s local knowledge.  The LocalWiki project
has its roots in Davis, California=92s DavisWiki (http://daviswiki.org),
an experimental project to collect and share interesting information
about the town of Davis, California, editable by anyone, that soon
became the most used media source in the city. Every day, over 1 in 6
residents use the Davis Wiki, and in a month nearly every residents
does -- and 1 in 7 residents contribute material to the Davis Wiki.

LocalWiki provides an innovative open-source platform for local,
geographic collaboration.  The network of autonomous LocalWiki
projects now includes over 55 major projects in 10 countries and in 7
languages.  Major, new LocalWiki projects include Santa Cruz Wiki
(https://scruzwiki.org/), Triangle Wiki (https://trianglewiki.org) and
DentonWiki (https://dentonwiki.org).  LocalWiki, a 501(c) non-profit,
is supported in part by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.