The National Aerial Photography Program (NAPP) was coordinated by the USGS as an interagency project to acquire cloud-free aerial photographs at an altitude of 20,000 feet above mean terrain elevation. The photographs were taken with a 6-inch focal length lens at a scale of 1:40,000. Coverage over the conterminous United States includes both black-and-white (BW) and color infrared (CIR) aerial photographs. Film type and extent of coverage were determined by available funds and operational requirements. The NAPP program, which was operational from 1987 to 2007, consists of more than 1.3 million images. Photographs were acquired on 9-inch film and were centered over quarters of USGS 7.5-minute quadrangles.To view historical imagery availability by county please visit the Historical Availability of Imagery map.To view more NAPP imagery visit the NAPP Historical Imagery Portfolio app.For ordering information please contact the GEO Customer Service Section at geo.sales@usda.gov.

The National Aerial Photography Program (NAPP) was coordinated by the USGS as an interagency project to acquire cloud-free aerial photographs at an altitude of 20,000 feet above mean terrain elevation. The photographs were taken with a 6-inch focal length lens at a scale of 1:40,000. Coverage over the conterminous United States includes both black-and-white (BW) and color infrared (CIR) aerial photographs. Film type and extent of coverage were determined by available funds and operational requirements. The NAPP program, which was operational from 1987 to 2007, consists of more than 1.3 million images. Photographs were acquired on 9-inch film and were centered over quarters of USGS 7.5-minute quadrangles.To view historical imagery availability by county please visit the Historical Availability of Imagery map.To view more NAPP imagery visit the NAPP Historical Imagery Portfolio app.For ordering information please contact the GEO Customer Service Section at geo.sales@usda.gov.

Aerial imagery of the state of Washington, from National Agricultural Imagery Program (NAIP)

The USGS, in cooperation with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM), created a series of geospatial products using historic aerial imagery and Structure from Motion (SfM) photogrammetry methods. A point cloud dataset (.laz) of the South Cow Mountain Recreational Area was generated from stereo historical aerial imagery acquired in by the BLM in 1977. The aerial imagery was downloaded from the USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Data Center's USGS Single Aerial Frame Photo archive and the point cloud was created using USGS guidelines. Photo alignment, error reduction, and dense point cloud generation followed guidelines documented in Over, J.R., Ritchie, A.C., Kranenburg, C.J., Brown, J.A., Buscombe, D., Noble, T., Sherwood, C.R., Warrick, J.A., and Wernette, P.A., 2021, Processing coastal imagery with Agisoft Metashape Professional Edition, version 1.6— Structure from motion workflow documentation: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2021–1039, 46 p., https://doi.org/10.3133/ofr20211039. Photo-identifiable points, selected as synthetic ground-control points, followed guidelines documented in Sherwood, C.R.; Warrick, J.A.; Hill, A.D.; Ritchie, A.C.; Andrews, B.D., and Plant, N.G., 2018. Rapid, remote assessment of Hurricane Matthew impacts using four-dimensional structure-from-motion photogrammetry https://doi.org/10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-18-00016.1 Additional post-processing of the 1977 dense point cloud, using Iterative Closest Point (ICP) analysis, was used to improve the alignment with the 2015 LiDAR point cloud. The ICP analysis is explained in Low, K.L., 2004. Linear least-squares optimization for point-to-plane ICP surface registration. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina, 4(10), pp.1-3. http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~lowkl/publications/lowk_point-to-plane_icp_techrep.pdf Data were processed using photogrammetry to generate a three-dimensional point cloud that identifies pixels of an object from multiple images taken from various angles and calculates the x, y, and z coordinates of that object/pixel. The point cloud was processed to create a digital surface model of the study area (57.3 cm resolution). Finally, source images were stitched together based on shared pixels and orthogonally adjusted to the digital surface model to create a high resolution (approximately 18.3 cm) orthoimage for the study area.

Historic 1939 Aerial Imagery for Cook County

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Aerial Photography data set includes over 2.5 million film transparencies. Beginning in 1937, photographs were acquired for mapping purposes at different altitudes using various focal lengths and film types. The resultant black-and-white photographs contain less than 5 percent cloud cover and were acquired under rigid quality control and project specifications (e.g., stereo coverage, continuous area coverage of map or administrative units). Prior to the initiation of the National High Altitude Photography (NHAP) program in 1980, the USGS photography collection was one of the major sources of aerial photographs used for mapping the United States. Since 1980, the USGS has acquired photographs over project areas that require photographs at a larger scale than the photographs in the NHAP and National Aerial Photography Program collections.

Monochromatic, mosaicked aerial imagery for the Tampa Bay watershed and Manatee County ranging in date from 1948-1958.

The National High Altitude Photography (NHAP) program was coordinated by the USGS as an interagency project to acquire cloud-free aerial photographs at an altitude of 40,000 feet above mean terrain elevation. Two different camera systems were used to obtain simultaneous coverage of black-and-white (BW) and color infrared (CIR) aerial photographs over the conterminous United States. The color-infrared photographs were taken with an 8.25-inch focal length lens and are at a scale of 1:58,000. The black-and-white photographs were taken with a 6-inch focal length lens and are at a scale of 1:80,000. The NHAP program, which was operational from 1980 to 1989, consists of approximately 500,000 images. Photographs were acquired on 9-inch film and centered over USGS 7.5-minute quadrangles.To view historical imagery availability by county please visit the Historical Availability of Imagery map.To view more NHAP imagery visit the NHAP Historical Imagery Gallery app.For ordering information please contact the GEO Customer Service Section at geo.sales@usda.gov.

Landgate has historical aerial imagery covering a large portion of Western Australia. Aerial imagery has been captured from 1948 to the present day. This dataset provides historical aerial photography boundaries and metadata associated with each project. Note: Some projects have not yet been catalogued. For more information please visit Landgate's Photography prints and enlargements page. © Western Australian Land Information Authority (Landgate). Use of Landgate data is subject to Personal Use License terms and conditions unless otherwise authorised under approved License terms and conditions.

This Hub contains information, resources and discovery of Commonwealth Historical Aerial Photography across Australia. Geoscience Australia has developed the Historical Aerial Photography (HAP) collection in an online data delivery system. Using the application, uses can search and download the commonwealth photography collection for free. The hub demonstrates the breadth of the collection and showcases the efforts in collecting and curating an extensive physical collection of film and documents.

Geoscience Australia has the most extensive historical aerial photography collection in terms of land coverage and time (from 1928-1996). This online catalogue provides means of easy search of the collection records. The mapping system allows users to understand what information is available and, if digitised, to preview and download the image data.

The application contains a map which users can search areas, current location or an area of interest, as well as customize the search criteria (date range, film number etc). The search results list the available aerial photography or flight line diagram, and if is available for direct download for free.

Web App. View historic aerials in St. Louis County, Missouri from 1937 to 2024.

This two foot pixel resolution black and white aerial photography was flown on various dates in July and August 1939. They were scanned in 2001, and georeferenced in 2002. This data should NOT be used at a scale larger than 1 inch = 400 feet. Due to the lack of sufficient camera calibration information, errors will increase towards the margin of each underlying photo, although this effect has been minimized by cropping individual photos to make this mosaic. Since these photos were scanned from paper prints, local distortions (from the media stretching and/or shrinking) may be present as well as pen marks and fading. Caution should be used in interpreting features in this photography with reference to current conditions. In particular, many roads and road intersections have been realigned in the more than 60 years since this photography was taken. This historic aerial photography was captured in digital form as the result of a cooperative project between the Illinois State Geological Survey and the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Mapping Division of the Lake County Department of Information Technology. It is part of a statewide program to preserve the oldest known extensive aerial photography for future generations. The original photography was performed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as part of a nation-wide program for use in agricultural assessment. Since the original negatives became unstable and were destroyed by the National Archives in the 1980's, only paper prints remain. A set of paper prints representing the best available quality was assembled from the collections of several agencies.

The data archive contains the aerial photographs and channel delineations used in our analysis. The images have been geo-referenced to the 1995 digital orthophoto quarter quadrangles as described by Miller and Friedman (2009). The separate images for each year can be viewed as a composite along with that year’s channel delineation using a geographic information system (GIS). The 2003 IKONOS satellite imagery is proprietary and, therefore, cannot be served here. The pre1939 shapefile serves as a reference for the original location of the flood plain that formed before the earliest photos were taken in 1939, and is not associated with any aerial images. The channel delineations for all photo years (including 2003) and the delineation of the outer flood-plain boundary are stored as shapefiles. These shapefiles can be manipulated using GIS applications to reproduce the spatial analyses reported in Miller and Friedman (2009). This metadata record is associated with the project landing page that describes the entire data package. There are nine child items on the main landing page; one represents the pre1939 reference shapefile and the other eight child items are each associated with a different repeat photography year. Each of these eight child items provide all images taken in that year (with the exception of 2003) and a SHP file that delineates channel location. Each year's photography consists of 4-8 scanned and referenced aerial photographs or digital satellite imagery in a geoTIFF format. SHP files from any year can be overlaid on top of the images to visualize change in channel location. TIFF images and associated SHP files are included as attachments or external sources and can be downloaded directly from the ScienceBase page. Reference: Miller, J.R., and J.M. Friedman. 2009. Influence of flow variability on flood-plain formation and destruction, Little Missouri River, North Dakota. Geological Society of America Bulletin 121:752-759.

Image library of (1) tile-drained landscapes and (2) tile-drain types used for training a machine-learning model that identifies (1) tile-drained landscapes and (2) differentiates two types of tile-drained areas visible in satellite imagery. These images were sourced from WorldView, Quickbird, and GeoEye satellite imagery (copyright DigitalGlobe) and cropped to features of interest. Imagery has a ground resolution of 0.34 - 0.65 m.

Pocatello, Idaho historical orthomosaic for 1975 was created by collecting, scanning, merging and georectifying historic photography of Pocatello. The total spatial error is less than 1 meter. These historical orthomosaic images were derived using SfM (Structure-from-motion photogrammetry). SfM uses a series of overlapping images aligned to form a 3D representation. Classification resulted in raster and vector data with discrete classes grouped into objects located in the urban corridor of Pocatello. High-resolution aerial photography of the Pocatello area was provided by Valley Air Photos and the Idaho State Historical Society for 1975. All images were transferred from a traditional 9x9 photograph and scanned at a 1210 dpi resolution. (Date: 09/19/1975, Scale: 1:12,000, Total GSD [GSD = photo scale x scanning resolution]: 209, Scanned resolution: 11240x11240 1210 dpi). The general workflow for processing was as follows: Image collection, image pre-processing combined with gps positioning and differential correction. Photo alignment, point cloud generation, point cloud meshing, orthomosaic and DSM (Digital Surface Models) output. Photos were aligned using Agisoft Photoscan. Focal lengths for data sets were 152mm. GPS points were collected for ground truthing. Photo alignment, dense cloud, and mesh generation using ground control points, resulted in orthomosaics and DSMs (Digital Surface Models) for time periods. Orthomosaics were produced at a fine scale spatial resolution: .25m resolution in all cases except the final year at .5m due to differences in scale of the original imagery. Each orthomosaic and DEM was outputted at .5 m and 1 m resolution respectively, in order to maintain continuity between data sets. See Brock Lipple Thesis, 2015, for more in-depth discussion of the scanning and merging process.[http://geology.isu.edu/thesis/Lipple.Brock.2015.pdf].

The points in this dataset represent the approximate geographic location of the centroids for scanned, non-georeferenced air photos that were captured between 1923 and 2007 and are freely available via the John R. Borchert Map Library and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.

The images were captured by a variety of government entities to address a wide range of applications. Images were scanned at resolutions ranging from 150 to 1200DPI. The collection includea a mixture of black & white, true color and infrared photographs. Various image collects were taken at a range of flight heights depending on the year and purpose of the collect.

This dataset features a collection of historical orthorectified aerial photographed images of the Brisbane City Council local government area captured by piloted aircraft during 1946.Prior to satellite imagery, extensive use was made of aerial photography to capture land information. The 1946 imagery service uses the Geocentric Datum of Australia 1994 (GDA94) datum and is projected in Zone 56 of the Map Grid of Australia (MGA56).This dataset is a tile layer, to view the images or to access the data, use the ArcGIS Hub, HTML and API links in the Data and resources section below.

Collection of digitised orthophoto maps over Queensland at various scales 1975–1996. An orthophoto map displays traditional map contours over an aerial photograph base. The quality of scans varies. The majority of series include key maps.

Please note: Each CSV file includes a jpg_linkage column this column contains the URL required to access the related map scan.

Declassified satellite images provide an important worldwide record of land-surface change. With the success of the first release of classified satellite photography in 1995, images from U.S. military intelligence satellites KH-7 and KH-9 were declassified in accordance with Executive Order 12951 in 2002. The data were originally used for cartographic information and reconnaissance for U.S. intelligence agencies. Since the images could be of historical value for global change research and were no longer critical to national security, the collection was made available to the public. Keyhole (KH) satellite systems KH-7 and KH-9 acquired photographs of the Earth’s surface with a telescopic camera system and transported the exposed film through the use of recovery capsules. The capsules or buckets were de-orbited and retrieved by aircraft while the capsules parachuted to earth. The exposed film was developed and the images were analyzed for a range of military applications. The KH-7 surveillance system was a high resolution imaging system that was operational from July 1963 to June 1967. Approximately 18,000 black-and-white images and 230 color images are available from the 38 missions flown during this program. Key features for this program were larger area of coverage and improved ground resolution. The cameras acquired imagery in continuous lengthwise sweeps of the terrain. KH-7 images are 9 inches wide, vary in length from 4 inches to 500 feet long, and have a resolution of 2 to 4 feet. The KH-9 mapping program was operational from March 1973 to October 1980 and was designed to support mapping requirements and exact positioning of geographical points for the military. This was accomplished by using image overlap for stereo coverage and by using a camera system with a reseau grid to correct image distortion. The KH-9 framing cameras produced 9 x 18 inch imagery at a resolution of 20-30 feet. Approximately 29,000 mapping images were acquired from 12 missions. The original film sources are maintained by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Duplicate film sources held in the USGS EROS Center archive are used to produce digital copies of the imagery.

The New Jersey Office of GIS, NJ Office of Information Technology manages a series of 11 digital orthophotography and scanned aerial photo maps collected at various years ranging from 1930 to 2017. Each year’s worth of imagery are available as Cloud Optimized GeoTIFF (COG) files and some years are available as compressed MrSID and/or JP2 files. Additionally, each year of imagery is organized into a tile grid scheme covering the entire geography of New Jersey. Many years share the same tiling grid while others have unique grids as defined by the project at the time.