We present a complete survey of COÂ ( 1 \rightarrow 0 ) Â emission in the Local Group dwarf irregular ICÂ 10 .
The survey , conducted with the BIMA interferometer , covers the stellar disk and a large fraction of the extended H i envelope with the sensitivity and resolution necessary to detect individual giant molecular clouds ( GMCs ) at the distance of IC 10 ( 950 kpc ) .
We find 16 clouds with a total CO luminosity of 1 \times 10 ^ { 6 } K km s ^ { -1 } pc ^ { 2 } , equivalent to 4 \times 10 ^ { 6 } M _ { \odot } of molecular gas using the Galactic CO-to-H _ { 2 } conversion factor .
Observations with the ARO 12m find that BIMA may resolve out as much as 50 % of the CO emission , and we estimate the total CO luminosity as \sim 2.2 \times 10 ^ { 6 } K km s ^ { -1 } pc ^ { 2 } .
We measure the properties of 14 GMCs from high resolution OVRO data .
These clouds are very similar to Galactic GMCs in their sizes , line widths , luminosities , and CO-to-H _ { 2 } Â conversion factors despite the low metallicity of ICÂ 10 ( Z \approx 1 / 5 Z _ { \odot } ) .
Comparing the BIMA survey to the atomic gas and stellar content of ICÂ 10 we find that most of the COÂ emission is coincident with high surface density H i. ICÂ 10 displays a much higher star formation rate per unit molecular ( H _ { 2 } ) or total ( \mbox { H i } + \mbox { H$ { } _ { 2 } $ } ) gas than most galaxies .
This could be a real difference or may be an evolutionary effect — the star formation rate may have been higher in the recent past .