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University of Oregon
UO Libraries

Online Aerial Photography

This guide links to freely available sources of online aerial photography of Oregon and the United States

Librarian

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Kathy Stroud
Contact:
University of Oregon Libraries
1299 University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403-1299
kstroud@uoregon.edu
541-346-3051

Free Online Aerial Photography - Oregon

The State of Oregon maintains several web sites that can be used to access Aerial Photography of Oregon.

Oregon Imagery Explorer: An interactive map that allows you to view, compare, and download Oregon imagery (2005, 2009, 2012,  2014, and 2016 NAIP color imagery as well as 2017 OSIP imagery for eastern Oregon)

Oregon Explorer Web Services to Stream Imagery offers the same aerial photography as Imagery Explorer only in a streaming format so that you may use the imagery as background layers in a GIS or other mapping application that accesses data from the Internet.

EarthExplorer from USGS

EarthExplorer is a good place to look for individual aerial photography frames of anywhere in the United States. You can search and download images from a number of USGS aerial photography programs. Elevation data, Landsat data, and other satellite and remote sensing data is also available. Aerial photography in EarthExplorer includes:

  • National High Altitude Program (NHAP) Black-and-white and color infrared aerial photographs obtained from an altitude of 40,000 feet over the United States (1980-1989)
  • National Aerial Photography Program (NAPP) Black-and-white and color infrared aerial photographs obtained from an altitude of 20,000 feet over the United States that are available as medium or high resolution digital images (1987-2007)
  • National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP) aerial imagery at a minimum resolution of 1-meter ground sample distance (GSD) for the United States during the agricultural growing season (2003 - present)
  • Aerial Photograph Single Frames Coverage is predominantly over the United States and includes portions of Central America and Puerto Rico. Individual photographs vary in date, scale, size, film type, quality, and coverage. While small compared to print aerial photography collections, the coverage is growing as older aerial photography gets scanned and added.
  • Digital Orthophoto Quadrangles (DOQs) computer-generated image of an aerial photograph in which the image displacement caused by terrain relief and camera tilt has been removed. The DOQ combines the image characteristics of the original photograph with the georeferenced qualities of a map (1980s - early 2000s).

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