High-resolution orthoimagery and digital surface models of Lookout Point Lake, Oregon, December 2024

In cooperation with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) surveyed ground control points and coordinated aerial photograph acquisition of Lookout Point Lake, located on the Middle Fork Willamette River about 30 kilometers upstream of the confluence of the Middle Fork and mainstem Willamette River in western Oregon. Lookout Point Lake is a multi-purpose reservoir impounded by the 84-meter ([m]; 276-foot [ft]) tall Lookout Point Dam. Aerial photographs were acquired by the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) on December 4, 2024, and December 20, 2024, when water levels were at 229 and 238 m (750 ft and 781 ft; National Geodetic Vertical Datum of 1929 [NGVD 29]) elevation, respectively, below the typical annual “low pool” or minimum-conservation pool elevation of 248 m (812 ft) for flood-risk management operations. Photographs were acquired at single altitudes with a WaldoAir XCAM Ultra 50 camera mounted on a Cessna aircraft and captured the entire reservoir area as defined by full pool (or maximum-conservation pool elevation, 290m [952 ft]), including the major river entering the reservoir, the Middle Fork Willamette River, as well as other smaller tributaries. The USGS applied structure-from-motion (SfM) techniques to these aerial photographs, following the workflow outlined in Over and others (2021) and used for similar datasets (Schwid and others, 2025), and generated three-dimensional xyz point clouds, digital surface models (DSM), and orthomosaics of Lookout Point Lake. 
 
This data release includes ground control points, dataset footprints, original aerial photographs, point clouds, DSMs, and orthomosaics of Lookout Point Lake with varying aerial extents and resolutions that were developed from imagery acquired December of 2024: (1) the December 4 model (LookoutPointLake_20241204) covered the entire reservoir area, excluding the area immediately surrounding the dam; (2) the December 20 model (LookoutPointLake_20241220) covered the entire reservoir area. 
 
This documentation describes a CSV file containing ground control point locations surveyed on November 20, 2024, that were used to spatially register SfM datasets and a polygon shapefile including the footprints (spatial coverage) of the DSMs and orthomosaics.
 

References:
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., accessed March 11, 2026, at https://doi.org/10.3133/ofr20211039.
 
Schwid, M.F., Keith, M.K., and Overstreet, B.T., 2025, High-resolution orthoimagery and digital surface models of Fern Ridge Lake, Oregon, during annual low pool, January and February, 2023: U.S. Geological Survey data release, accessed March 11, 2026, at https://doi.org/10.5066/P1Q5K657.