Antarctic Mapping Tool: how can I evaluate the distance of a point from the coastline?

Hello.

I'm working with Antarctic Mapping Tool and in order to plot some data, I'm trying to extrapolate the distance of the sampling points from the sea. Problem is, I can't find a good way to do it: I'm trying to estimate it using pathdist and tracing a line from my lat long point in an arbitrary direction and evaluate the distance like that.

I'm trying to find a solution, but apart from manually find the minimum of the distance (e.g. I sample a number of points on the coast and then I find the minimum distance using trigonometry) I can't find another way...

Answer 1

[Chad Greene]

The easiest solution is the dist2mask function in the Antarctic boundaries add-on for AMT. Syntax is

d = dist2mask('openocean',x,y); 

Which gives the distance to the coast d in kilometers for any arbitrary points x,y.