Aerial Photography
An aerial photograph is a picture of the earth’s surface taken with a camera mounted in a plane. Millions of dollars are spent each year by local, regional, state, tribal, and federal government agencies to collect aerial imagery. The uses are many, thus the demand for up-to-date imagery is constantly increasing. Since the 1930's, aerial photos have been acquired using large format film cameras. Today, film cameras, along with newer digital cameras that can record black & white and color images simultaneously, are used for many projects.
Orthophotography
Over the past decade, digital orthoimagery has evolved to form the backbone of GIS operations throughout Wisconsin. Digital orthophotos are aerial photographs that have been processed to remove distortions. Recent digital orthophotos exist for most of the state.
Satellite Imagery
A wide variety of satellite images are collected of the earth on a regular basis. Besides being outstanding pictures of the earth’s surface, these images have many applications in agriculture, geology, forestry, regional planning, education and intelligence gathering.
LIDAR
Light
detection
and
ranging (LIDAR) has become widely accepted as a tool for generating highly accurate terrain models that are used in a variety of GIS applications. LIDAR collection systems use a combination of aircraft-mounted laser sensors along with a
global positioning system (GPS) receiver to record elevations on the earth's surface.
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