Abstract

Production and Use of Historical Digital Orthoimagery: Lake Tahoe Basin
Track: Remote Sensing Imagery
Author(s): Christopher Soulard

With the absence of high-resolution satellite imagery until recent years, historical aerial photographs have traditionally provided the only means to high-resolution temporal Earth-surface studies. Furthermore, historical aerial photographs are generally the only imagery record of Earth surfaces prior to satellite imagery. However, unique photogrammetric challenges are inherent in working with historical aerial photographs, which commonly have varying or unknown scales, camera characteristics, coverage areas, image quality, and capture dates. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is successfully producing historical digital orthophotos from historical aerial photographs by integrating standardized methods and utilizing sophisticated image processing techniques, while meeting National Map Accuracy Standards. This methodology, which was partially created for interdisciplinary landscape-change research in a small area of the Lake Tahoe Basin relating to land-use/land-cover change, transportation-networks, impervious-surface-area, and stream-channel-morphology, has now been applied in the entire Lake Tahoe Basin to create historical digital orthophotos for three dates (1940, 1969, and 1987).

Christopher Soulard
US Geological Survey
345 Middlefield Road
MS-531
Menlo Park , California 94025
United States
Phone: (650) 329-4317
E-mail: csoulard@usgs.gov