Old aerial photos

[VeronicaM]

This may have been covered before, or may be common knowledge, but...
So I grew up in south jersey (galloway highlands), my family being one of the first in the area. I've seen firsthand the utter devestation that developers have wreaked on the land in the last 20 or so years. Does anyone have any aerial photos of the land, maybe of satellite quality, prior to 2000 or so? Maybe even earlier like 1950?

 

[RednekF350]

Look no further than the top of this page .
NJPB Live Maps in the banner will give you current and 1930 and I believe the DOQ's are 1995.


http://www.historicaerials.com/ will give you various years from 1940+/- to 2002.

 

[MarkBNJ]

This may have been covered before, or may be common knowledge, but...
So I grew up in south jersey (galloway highlands), my family being one of the first in the area. I've seen firsthand the utter devestation that developers have wreaked on the land in the last 20 or so years. Does anyone have any aerial photos of the land, maybe of satellite quality, prior to 2000 or so? Maybe even earlier like 1950?

I think you'll find that the last 20 or so years have been the least devastating.

 

[Boyd]

Developers have certainly taken a toll on the pines. But when you look at those 1930's photos, it's kind of shocking to see how much of the land was raped. Since there were few environmental regulations then, I guess corporations were free to clear cut and pit mine whatever they liked. When you compare those photos to modern times, it's clear that the pines are in much better shape today - as a region that is.

 

[Teegate]

it's clear that the pines are in much better shape today - as a region that is.

For sure! But development could change that quite quickly if not watched closely.

Guy

 

[Boyd]

Interestingly, the collapse of the housing market has actually helped conservation groups buy land from developers in other states. See the following article from the Wall Street Journal:

http://online.wsj.com/public/articl...Nnz1FOa8hsA7l81r8U_20090509.html?mod=rss_free

There's a green lining to the real-estate cloud: Developers are dropping plans to build on some choice pieces of land and instead are selling it for such uses as public parks and nature preserves. One of the big beneficiaries is Trust for Public Land, a San Francisco nonprofit group that specializes in buying land for conservation. The Trust often struggled during property-boom years to find sellers among land owners near urban centers. Now, U.S. property owners from Massachusetts to Hawaii are flocking to it.

The Nature Conservancy, Arlington, Va., is among the national groups working on similar deals. Their purchases tend to be larger -- involving thousands of acres. "Two to three years ago, local farmers and ranchers were eager to sell off their land and cash out," says the Nature Conservancy's Cristina Mestre. "Now, we're being approached en masse" to buy development rights.

 

[chemicalcraig]

That's great about conservation groups buying land like that. And yes, I see that there really wasn't much in the way of regulation to stop clearcutting etc... back in the day. My thought on that is that while we are recognizing the harmful effects of sprawl and many are trying to combat it, industry now knows how to pollute much more efficiently on smaller plots of land. I'll take sustainable forestry over irreversible industrial pollution any day.

 

[MarkBNJ]

I think the "harmful effects of sprawl" are way over-rated. If you look at the trends in terms of the percentage of arable land we're occupying, as well as the reforestation trends, it's hard to argue that we're over-populating the continent, much less the planet. New Jersey in particular had negative growth in 2006 and I believe 2007, which sort of shocks a lot of people. We lost 70 or 80k people in 2006.

Not that I want more people. I'm kind of a misanthrope anyway.

I'm not sure where the burbs are going, but I don't expect them to get a lot bigger in NJ. There is a real trend toward re-urbanization, and there is a _ton_ of rehabitable urban and near-urban real estate left over from the flight of the last two decades.

 

[Hinchman's Hill]

Developers have certainly taken a toll on the pines. But when you look at those 1930's photos, it's kind of shocking to see how much of the land was raped. Since there were few environmental regulations then, I guess corporations were free to clear cut and pit mine whatever they liked. When you compare those photos to modern times, it's clear that the pines are in much better shape today - as a region that is.

True enough. What strikes me is how few trees there are in the 1930s aerials, even in some pretty wet areas. I wonder what percentage of the population was relying then on wood for home heating.

 

[Ben Ruset]

And charcoal making.

 

[Teegate]

A man I know purchased photo's from historiclaerials.com and they charge $20 a photo. Here is what he wrote.


"I bought these photos from HistoricAerials.com. They charge $20 each to download($5 for more recent years)"

The originals are 1200 x 900

Guy

 

[Ben Ruset]

He downloaded a 1200x900?

 

[Teegate]

He downloaded a 1200x900?

I would say yes.

Guy

 

[Ben Ruset]

I wonder if you get a preview of the image before you buy. What they show you on the screen is not anything close to 1200x900, so you have no idea what they're cropping out of the image.