2020 Systemic Imagery, Upper Mississippi River System (UMRS)

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Upper Mississippi River Restoration (UMRR) program, through its Long Term Resource Monitoring (LTRM) element, collected aerial imagery of the systemic Upper Mississippi River System (UMRS) during the summer of 2020. The main purpose of the aerial imagery was to develop Land Cover/Land Use (LCU) spatial datasets of navigable pools (the stretch of river between locks and dams) and reaches of the UMRS. These pools and reaches include Pools 1 through 26, the Open River Reach, the entire Illinois River, and the navigable portions of the Minnesota, St. Croix, and Kaskaskia Rivers.

Digital aerial imagery was collected of the systemic Upper Mississippi River System (UMRS) from 2020-08-11 to 2020-08-26 by a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and U.S. Geological Survey team. The aerial-imagery team used a pair of mapping-grade Phase One 100-megapixel cameras (the iXU-RS1000 camera for red, green, and blue [RGB] spectrum bands and the iXU-RS 1000 Achromatic camera for near-infrared [NIR] spectrum band), co-mounted in a Somag SSM270 3-axis gyro-stabilized mount. The aerial imagery, collected in 4-band (RGB and NIR) with 60% forward overlap and 30% side overlap, was captured at a resolution of 0.2 meters/pixel above Mississippi River Lock & Dam 13 and at a resolution of 0.4 meters/pixel below Lock & Dam 13 and the Illinois River. The raw aerial imagery was processed using Phase One iXCapture and Erdas Imagine software to stack 4-band images, orthorectify individual images, mosaic the orthorectified images by navigation pool or reach, and produce stereo models for the mapping team to view imagery in three-dimension (3D) using specialized 3D computer workstations. The individual orthoimages were exported as TIFFs and the orthomosaic images were exported as JPEG2000. The orthomosaic imagery were used by the mapping team to aid fieldwork and mapping.

The data products and orthoimages (frames and mosaics) are primarily intended for resource managers and researchers to assess and evaluate current (2020) vegetation components and long-term vegetation trends within the UMRS. The 2020 aerial imagery is the fourth systemic-wide collection of the UMRS, with prior collections occurring every decade including 1989, 2000, and 2010/11.