New Mid-Atlantic NAIP series

[Boyd]

A new map is now available for your amusement! 2017 USDA/NAIP aerials with mid-atlantic coverage. I will be upgrading all the NJ NAIP aerials to this larger area in the coming weeks. A bit of trivia.... my maps of the Pines are about 500,000 tiles. Full New Jersey maps are about a million tiles. This map is about 5 million tiles... 10 times the size of my old maps!

The NYC and Long Island section is the same as the old Long Island 2017 map. I made my own map of the pines with this imagery some time ago but never released it. It has been heavily contrast-adjusted, which I think brings out the details in forested areas. The original imagery seems very pale - you can compare this map with the original 2017 imagery in NJPB maps; they're very different! I also contrast-adjusted North Jersey but the effect is less severe.

You will see it on the menu here. And - just to keep confusing you - I have re-named the old Northeast NAIP aerials as"USGS Nat'l Map Aerials". That map is a USGS mash-up of NAIP aerials, but at lower resolution. Since I'm going to be doing a whole series of the "real" NAIP aerials, I wanted to keep this separate.

Finally, I'm continuing to trim down remotely-hosted maps outside of the Northeast region. The Minnesota and Minneapolis maps have now been removed. Have also discontinued my weird "Midnight in NJ" map, which didn't have much use. And I deleted the PinesLC map that showed different areas of landcover in a very unattractive and confusing way.

As usual, all these changes will probably cause problems with your browser's cache. Scroll down to the toubleshooting section at the end of the help file for cache-clearing instructions if needed.

 

[Boyd]

The new, expanded 2010 NAIP aerials are now online, with full mid-Atlantic coverage. I'll be updating the 2006, 2013 and 2019 NAIP aerials to cover the mid-Atlantic in the next few weeks as well.

The other big change is the simplification of the Map Menu Options. Now there are only three choices available - automatic, favorites and all maps. If you previously used one of the old options (such as New Jersey), it will be changed to automatic now. If you had favorites as the default, there should be no change. This change also puts the favorite editor on the same menu.

As I posted before in the other thread, you may need to clear your browser cache following this update, you will find more info there.

 

[Boyd]

Have just finished the expansion of the 2006 NAIP aerials to cover the entire mid-Atlantic region (4.7 million tiles). NAIP began work in 2003 and this map is basically their earliest aerials of the Northeast. For example, 2006 is the first year they have available for New Jersey. Quite a mixed bag here, maybe they were still figuring out the best way to film? The NJ aerials look good, with natural colors and good exposure. But Pennsylvania looks horrible, very dark with low contrast and an overall greenish-blue cast. Then, the New York aerials are very pale and low contrast. They're all still quite usable, but it's pretty surprising to see the difference when you zoom way out.

I made a change to how the map menu behaves in this update. If you leave the menu open, it updates to show coverage in realtime as you drag the map around (previously, it only updated when you stopped dragging the map). I like this new way better, it gives you a good idea of the boundaries of the different maps. To see this in action, open the maps menu, go here and drag the map around, in and out of NJ. You should see the menu respond as you go in and out of map coverage areas. Let me know what you think of this and if it causes any problems. Your computer is doing a lot of work to support this feature (constantly scanning the list of maps and checking against your location) but I think modern computers are up to the task.

In doing a little research, I stumbled on this wikipedia page for NAIP and learned something new. I guess this is why NJGIN doesn't have any NAIP beyond 2019? Doesn't surprise me, with all the budget-cutting frenzy I am grabbing as much free geodata as I can while it's still available.

Potential changes in licensing
The FSA is considering a program change to availability and licensing for products of the NAIP beyond the 2018 fiscal year. Under review are a switch from a public domain program to a Commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) licensing model. This change would require all users to begin paying for services and data, an effort that the FSA hopes would supplement 2018 budget reductions and lapses in funding from cost-share partners.

A final decision, originally expected on May 1, 2018, was delayed in order to give the FSA additional time to research options for continuing the program. At issue is the acquisition strategy for the data. Options under discussion include eliminating full state coverage to acquire agriculture-only land, restricting coverage to “high value” agriculture states, and/or using the COTS licensing model. FSA and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) would continue to work towards a positive solution that benefits all stakeholders. The delayed decision meant that the NAIP would remain a public domain program for image data acquired through 2019.

Next up, will be expanding the 2013 and 2019 NAIP aerials to mid-Atlantic coverage. As always, you might need to clear your browser cache to make these changes take effect.