Integration of Land Cover Trends Field Photography with an Online Map Service

The USGS National Land Cover Trends Project has the largest repository of field photos at the USGS (over 33,000 photos). Prior to CDI funding, Land Cover Trends had limited funding to make the national collection of photos available online for researchers, land managers, and citizens. The goal of this CDI project was to add geotags and keywords to the digital copies of each field photo and make the collection searchable and downloadable via the Internet. By funding the effort to integrate Land Cover Trends field photography and online mapping technology, CDI has helped provide access to geographic data needed to conduct science and support policy decisions. Sharing georeferenced photography distributed across the conterminous United States creates an excellent avenue for the scientific community to provide access to scientific results. Additionally, this type of sharing allows the community to develop future research opportunities, such as future repeat photography research, or applications in which photos may serve as training or test site data for other remote sensing classifications. The integration of online map services and Land Cover Trends field photography also provides public access to government research and increases the visibility of such research. Serving data to the public is directly in line with the USGS’s mission and provides opportunities for future scientific collaboration by communicating USGS research to the scientific community.

Principal Investigator : Christopher E Soulard, Benjamin M Sleeter, wacevedo@usgs.gov
Cooperator/Partner : Ryan Longhenry