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.

The aerial photography inventoried by the Pilot Land Data System (PLDS) at NASA AMES Research Center has been transferred to the USGS EROS Data Center. The photos were obtained from cameras mounted on high and medium altitude aircraft based at the NASA Ames Research Center. Several cameras with varying focal lengths, lenses and film formats are used, but the Wild RC-10 camera with a focal length of 152 millimeters and a 9 by 9 inch film format is most common. The positive transparencies are typically used for ancillary ground checks in conjunctions with digital processing for the same sites. The aircraft flights, specifically requested by scientists performing approved research, often simultaneously collect data using other sensors on
board (e.g. Thematic Mapper Simulators (TMS) and Thermal Infrared Multispectral Scanners). High altitude color infrared photography is used regularly by government agencies for such applications as crop yield forecasting, timber inventory and defoliation assessment, water resource management, land use surveys, water pollution monitoring, and natural disaster assessment.

To order, specify the latitude and longitude of interest. You will then be given a list of photos available for that location. In some cases, "flight books" are available at EDC that describe the nature of the mission during which the photos were taken and other attribute information. The customer service personnel have access to these books for those photo sets for which the books exist.

The Aerial Photography Single Frame Records collection is a large and diverse group of imagery acquired by Federal organizations from 1937 to the present. Over 6.4 million frames of photographic images are available for download as medium and high resolution digital products. The high resolution data provide access to photogrammetric quality scans of aerial photographs with sufficient resolution to reveal landscape detail and to facilitate the interpretability of landscape features. Coverage is predominantly over the United States and includes portions of Central America and Puerto Rico. Individual photographs vary in scale, size, film type, quality, and coverage.

The aerial imagery in this dataset are copies of standard digital orthophoto quarter quadrangles (DOQQ) received from the Natural Resource and Conservation Service which they obtained from the US Geological Survey. Dates range from approximately 1995 on the western side of the state thru 1998 on the eastern side of the state. An index containing dates is available in the QuadIndex dataset. Image acquisition scale: 1:40,000 (1"=3,333 feet); Map scale: Meets national map accuracy standards for the scale of 1:12,000 (1"=1000 feet); Accuracy: +/- 33.3 feet; Pixel size: 1 meter x 1 meter.

DOQ images were acquired in native BSQ or TIFF format and either 1) left in UTM, NAD83, Zone 14 format, or 2) reprojected from UTM NAD83 Zone 13 to Zone 14 using ArcInfo Workstation vers. 8.2, 8.3, and 9.0; They were then clipped to USGS 3.75' quarter quadrangles before being mosaiced into state-wide image; Resampling for SDE pyramids was done using bilinear interpolation. The work was done June 2002 thru September 2004.

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Introduction: Between 1958 and 1999, Austin Post led the USGS collection of aerial imagery of North American glaciers. These images are primarily vertical stereo black and white images, although single oblique images, as well as color images have been collected. The glaciers of North America were the subjects, and the digital products made available here serve to document the changes that have occurred to the glaciers over the past 5 decades. The purpose of this project is to preserve the data contained within these film images in a digital format for future analysis of North American glacier change. File Layout: 1. The first level contains an overall data set of image metadata from 1964 - 1997 (nagapData.csv) and an R script (searchData.R) with instructions on how to search and subset the data. fileLayout.pdf shows the file structure and folder contents visually. There are also three kml files with flight path information by decade. 2. The second level is the year in which the pictures were taken. There are 32 years with images from 1964 – 1997. The majority of these folders are jpegs with notes provided by Austin Post. They also contain a year-specific csv (YYYY.csv) that contains image metadata for the entire year (date, roll numbers, location name, longitude, latitude, altitude, media, and comments). The overall data set (nagapData.csv) is the aggregate of each individual “YYYY.csv” file. 3. The glacier photos are located at the third level (this level). The folders at this level are distinguished by camera roll number (1, 2, etc.), and image type (thumbnail, jpeg, or tif); some also contain fiducial and oblique image folders. This level primarily contains image files of aerial photos as either thumbnails, jpegs, or tifs. It also includes a csv with image metadata specific to each roll (date, roll numbers, location name, longitude, latitude, altitude, media, and comments), a text file (info.txt) with camera specifications unique to each image, and a text file (histo.txt or matchReport.txt) with color information and scanner specifications unique to each image.

Introduction: Between 1958 and 1999, Austin Post led the USGS collection of aerial imagery of North American glaciers. These images are primarily vertical stereo black and white images, although single oblique images, as well as color images have been collected. The glaciers of North America were the subjects, and the digital products made available here serve to document the changes that have occurred to the glaciers over the past 5 decades. The purpose of this project is to preserve the data contained within these film images in a digital format for future analysis of North American glacier change. File Layout: 1. The first level contains an overall data set of image metadata from 1964 - 1997 (nagapData.csv) and an R script (searchData.R) with instructions on how to search and subset the data. fileLayout.pdf shows the file structure and folder contents visually. There are also three kml files with flight path information by decade. 2. The second level (this level) is the year in which the pictures were taken. There are 32 years with images from 1964 – 1997. The majority of these folders are jpegs with notes provided by Austin Post. They also contain a year-specific csv (YYYY.csv) that contains image metadata for the entire year (date, roll numbers, location name, longitude, latitude, altitude, media, and comments). The overall data set (nagapData.csv) is the aggregate of each individual “YYYY.csv” file. 3. The glacier photos are located at the third level. The folders at this level are distinguished by camera roll number (1, 2, etc.), and image type (thumbnail, jpeg, or tif); some also contain fiducial and oblique image folders. This level primarily contains image files of aerial photos as either thumbnails, jpegs, or tifs. It also includes a csv with image metadata specific to each roll (date, roll numbers, location name, longitude, latitude, altitude, media, and comments), a text file (info.txt) with camera specifications unique to each image, and a text file (histo.txt) with color information unique to each image.

Introduction: Between 1958 and 1999, Austin Post led the USGS collection of aerial imagery of North American glaciers. These images are primarily vertical stereo black and white images, although single oblique images, as well as color images have been collected. The glaciers of North America were the subjects, and the digital products made available here serve to document the changes that have occurred to the glaciers over the past 5 decades. The purpose of this project is to preserve the data contained within these film images in a digital format for future analysis of North American glacier change. File Layout: 1. The first level contains an overall data set of image metadata from 1964 - 1997 (nagapData.csv) and an R script (searchData.R) with instructions on how to search and subset the data. fileLayout.pdf shows the file structure and folder contents visually. There are also three kml files with flight path information by decade. 2. The second level is the year in which the pictures were taken. There are 32 years with images from 1964 – 1997. The majority of these folders are jpegs with notes provided by Austin Post. They also contain a year-specific csv (YYYY.csv) that contains image metadata for the entire year (date, roll numbers, location name, longitude, latitude, altitude, media, and comments). The overall data set (nagapData.csv) is the aggregate of each individual “YYYY.csv” file. 3. The glacier photos are located at the third level (this level). The folders at this level are distinguished by camera roll number (1, 2, etc.), and image type (thumbnail, jpeg, or tif); some also contain fiducial and oblique image folders. This level primarily contains image files of aerial photos as either thumbnails, jpegs, or tifs. It also includes a csv with image metadata specific to each roll (date, roll numbers, location name, longitude, latitude, altitude, media, and comments), a text file (info.txt) with camera specifications unique to each image, and a text file (histo.txt or matchReport.txt) with color information and scanner specifications unique to each image.

'The National High Altitude Photography (NHAP) program, which was operated from 1980-1989, was coordinated by the U.S. Geological Survey as an interagency project to eliminate duplicate photography in various Government programs. The aim of the program was to cover the 48 conterminous states over a 5-year span. In the NHAP program, black-and-white and color-infrared aerial photographs were obtained on 9-inch film from an altitude of 40,000 feet above mean terrain elevation and are centered over USGS 7.5-minute quadrangles. The color-infrared photographs are at a scale of 1:58,000 (1 inch equals about .9 miles), and the black-and-white photographs are at a scale of 1:80,000 (1 inch equals about 1.26 miles). All NHAP flights were flown in a North to South direction. These photographs are offered as digital images. '

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.

8 aerial photographs were taken along the Little Missouri River in 1958. All images were geo-referenced to the 1995 digital orthophoto quarter quadrangles as described by Miller and Friedman (2009). Both the flood plain and active channel of the river were delineated on the 1995 digital orthophoto quadrangles and overlaid on rectified photos. ArcGIS was used to draw the polygons that delineate the flood plain and active channel; the delineation was saved as a SHP file. The separate images (geoTIFFs) can be viewed as a composite along with that year's channel delineation (SHP file) using a geographic information system (GIS) application. 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.

'USGS and Non USGS Agencies Aerial Photo Reference Mosaics inventory contains indexes to aerial photographs. The inventory contains imagery from various government agencies that are now archived at the USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center. The film types, scales, and acquisition schedules differed according to project requirements. Low-, middle-, and high-altitude photographs were collected. '

'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 and are 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. Photographs are available as medium resolution digital images in Tagged Image File Format (TIFF). Medium resolution digital products were created with a digital single-lens reflex camera at a resolution of 63 microns, or 400 dots per inch (dpi). '

The Coquille River system is an unregulated system that encompasses 2,745 square kilometers of southwestern Oregon and flows into the Pacific Ocean near the town of Bandon, Oregon. Beginning in the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest, the South Fork Coquille River gains the Middle Fork Coquille River (drainage area 798 square kilometers) and shortly thereafter the North Fork Coquille River (749 square kilometers). In cooperation with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Geological Survey completed a reconnaissance-level assessment of channel condition and bed-material transport relevant to the permitting of in-stream gravel extraction along the the South Fork Coquille River from river kilometer (RKM) 115.4 near its confluence with Upper Land Creek to RKM 58.5 at its confluence with the North Fork Coquille River, the mainstem Coquille River from RKM 58.5 at the confluence of the South and North Forks of the Coquille River to its mouth, the Middle Fork Coquille River from RKM 15.4 to its confluence with the South Fork Coquille River, and the North Fork Coquille River from RKM 14.6 to its confluence with the South Fork Coquille River. To support these analyses, digital channel maps were produced to depict channel and floodplain conditions in the Coquille River basin from different time periods. GIS layers defining the wetted channel and bar features and channel centerline of Hunter Creek were developed for four time periods: 1939, 1967, 2005, and 2009. For this project, the active channel was defined as area typically inundated during annual high flows, and includes the low-flow channel as well as side channels, islands, and channel-flanking gravel bars. The wetted channel and bar feature datasets were developed by digitizing from aerial photographs. Aerial photographs from 1939 and 1967 were scanned, rectified, and mosaicked for this project (See metadata for each photograph set for more information on the rectification process and resolution of each dataset). Digital orthophotographs from 2005 and 2009 are publicly available.

High resolution orthorectified images combine the image characteristics of an aerial photograph with the geometric qualities of a map. An orthoimage is a uniform-scale image where corrections have been made for feature displacement such as building tilt and for scale variations caused by terrain relief, sensor geometry, and camera tilt. A mathematical equation based on ground control points, sensor calibration information, and a digital elevation model is applied to each pixel to rectify the image to obtain the geometric qualities of a map. A digital orthoimage may be created from several photographs mosaicked to form the final image. The source imagery may be black-and-white, natural color, or color infrared with a pixel resolution of 1-meter or finer. With orthoimagery, the resolution refers to the distance on the ground represented by each pixel.

Introduction: Between 1958 and 1999, Austin Post led the USGS collection of aerial imagery of North American glaciers. These images are primarily vertical stereo black and white images, although single oblique images, as well as color images have been collected. The glaciers of North America were the subjects, and the digital products made available here serve to document the changes that have occurred to the glaciers over the past 5 decades. The purpose of this project is to preserve the data contained within these film images in a digital format for future analysis of North American glacier change. File Layout: 1. The first level contains an overall data set of image metadata from 1964 - 1997 (nagapData.csv) and an R script (searchData.R) with instructions on how to search and subset the data. fileLayout.pdf shows the file structure and folder contents visually. There are also three kml files with flight path information by decade. 2. The second level is the year in which the pictures were taken. There are 32 years with images from 1964 – 1997. The majority of these folders are jpegs with notes provided by Austin Post. They also contain a year-specific csv (YYYY.csv) that contains image metadata for the entire year (date, roll numbers, location name, longitude, latitude, altitude, media, and comments). The overall data set (nagapData.csv) is the aggregate of each individual “YYYY.csv” file. 3. The glacier photos are located at the third level (this level). The folders at this level are distinguished by camera roll number (1, 2, etc.), and image type (thumbnail, jpeg, or tif); some also contain fiducial and oblique image folders. This level primarily contains image files of aerial photos as either thumbnails, jpegs, or tifs. It also includes a csv with image metadata specific to each roll (date, roll numbers, location name, longitude, latitude, altitude, media, and comments), a text file (info.txt) with camera specifications unique to each image, and a text file (histo.txt or matchReport.txt) with color information and scanner specifications unique to each image.

EarthExplorerUse the USGS EarthExplorer (EE) to search, download, and order satellite images, aerial photographs, and cartographic products. In addition to data from the Landsat missions and a variety of other data providers, EE provides access to MODIS land data products from the NASA Terra and Aqua missions, and ASTER level-1B data products over the U.S. and Territories from the NASA ASTER mission. Registered users of EE have access to more features than guest users.Earth Explorer Distribution DownloadThe EarthExplorer user interface is an online search, discovery, and ordering tool developed by the United States Geological Survey (USGS). EarthExplorer supports the searching of satellite, aircraft, and other remote sensing inventories through interactive and textual-based query capabilities. Through the interface, users can identify search areas, datasets, and display metadata, browse and integrated visual services within the interface.The distributable version of EarthExplorer provides the basic software to provide this functionality. Users are responsible for verification of system recommendations for hosting the application on your own servers. By default, this version of our code is not hooked up to a data source so you will have to integrate the interface with your data. Integration options include service-based API's, databases, and anything else that stores data. To integrate with a data source simply replace the contents of the 'getDataset' and 'search' functions in the CWIC.php file.Distribution is being provided due to users requests for the codebase. The EarthExplorer source code is provided "As Is", without a warranty or support of any kind. The software is in the public domain; it is available to any government or private institution.The software code base is managed through the USGS Configuration Management Board. The software is managed through an automated configuration management tool that updates the code base when new major releases have been thoroughly reviewed and tested.Link: https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/

Introduction: Between 1958 and 1999, Austin Post led the USGS collection of aerial imagery of North American glaciers. These images are primarily vertical stereo black and white images, although single oblique images, as well as color images have been collected. The glaciers of North America were the subjects, and the digital products made available here serve to document the changes that have occurred to the glaciers over the past 5 decades. The purpose of this project is to preserve the data contained within these film images in a digital format for future analysis of North American glacier change. File Layout: 1. The first level contains an overall data set of image metadata from 1964 - 1997 (nagapData.csv) and an R script (searchData.R) with instructions on how to search and subset the data. fileLayout.pdf shows the file structure and folder contents visually. There are also three kml files with flight path information by decade. 2. The second level is the year in which the pictures were taken. There are 32 years with images from 1964 – 1997. The majority of these folders are jpegs with notes provided by Austin Post. They also contain a year-specific csv (YYYY.csv) that contains image metadata for the entire year (date, roll numbers, location name, longitude, latitude, altitude, media, and comments). The overall data set (nagapData.csv) is the aggregate of each individual “YYYY.csv” file. 3. The glacier photos are located at the third level (this level). The folders at this level are distinguished by camera roll number (1, 2, etc.), and image type (thumbnail, jpeg, or tif); some also contain fiducial and oblique image folders. This level primarily contains image files of aerial photos as either thumbnails, jpegs, or tifs. It also includes a csv with image metadata specific to each roll (date, roll numbers, location name, longitude, latitude, altitude, media, and comments), a text file (info.txt) with camera specifications unique to each image, and a text file (histo.txt or matchReport.txt) with color information and scanner specifications unique to each image.

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A dataset comprised of road centerlines in Wyoming, USA, digitized to 2015 aerial photography from the National Agriculture Imagery Program. This dataset is an update to a former U.S. Geological Survey Data Series (“Large scale Wyoming transportation data: a resource planning tool”: O'Donnell and others, 2014) digitized to 2009 aerial photography. The U.S. Geological Survey Fort Collins Science Center created statewide roads data for the Bureau of Land Management Wyoming State Office using 2015 aerial photography from the National Agriculture Imagery Program. To ensure a systematic and repeatable approach of capturing roads on the landscape using on-screen digitizing from true color National Agriculture Imagery Program imagery, we developed a photogrammetry key and quality assurance/quality control protocols (O'Donnell and others, 2014). The updated statewide roads data will support the Bureau of Land Management’s resource management requirements with a standardized map product representing 2015 ground conditions. The data product, represented at 1:4,000 and +/- 10 meters spatial accuracy, contains 397,603 kilometers (O'Donnell and others, 2014 included 425,275 kilometers) within seven attribute classes. The quality control of these products indicated a 97.2 percent accuracy of aspatial information and 98.8 percent accuracy of spatial locations (an 86.3% accuracy was determined when considering spatial accuracy of mapped roads, commission errors, and omission errors). All errors identified during quality assurance assessments were corrected in the final product. Approximately 52 percent of the updated roads data were corrected for spatial errors of greater than 1 meters relative to the pre-existing road data (O'Donnell and others, 2014). Twenty percent of the updated roads involved correcting spatial errors of greater than 5 meters and 16 percent of the updated roads involved correcting spatial errors greater than 9 meters. The updated dataset includes the following improvements:1) Roads developed since 2009 but not roads developed after 2015; 2) Removal of commission errors (roads that were digitized but did not exist in imagery) was a principal focus of this dataset.

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