[Talk-us] USGS National Map aerial imagery

[Lord-Castillo, Brett]

USGS does not pay for anything below 1 ft resolution in an urban area (as defined by the Urban Area Security Initiative) or 2 ft anywhere else. Anything below that is not owned by USGS, but may be in the public domain due to a USGS contribution. There are orthoimagery sets on the seamless server that do not have a USGS contribution but are hosted there; those are not in the public domain. Unfortunately, due to cutbacks in the USGS orthoimagery program, that is becoming increasingly common (especially for large cities that want below 1 ft anyway). The best way to ensure that the imagery can be used for OSM is to contact the agency or company listed as "Source_Citation" under "Lineage". Under the last "Process_Step" under "Lineage", it should specify if there is a USGS Point of Contact for the orthoimagery set. If there is, then you can reach that point of contact to clarify usage too.

Brett Lord-Castillo
Information Systems Designer/GIS Programmer
St. Louis County Police
Office of Emergency Management
14847 Ladue Bluffs Crossing Drive
Chesterfield, MO 63017
Office: 314-628-5400
Fax: 314-628-5508
Direct: 314-628-5407



-----Original Message-----

Date: Sat, 05 Jun 2010 20:14:28 -0400
From: Lars Ahlzen <lars at ahlzen.com>
Subject: Re: [Talk-us] USGS National Map aerial imagery
To: Greg Troxel <gdt at ir.bbn.com>, 	Talk Openstreetmap
	<talk-us at openstreetmap.org>
Message-ID: <4C0AE864.7030301 at ahlzen.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

On 06/05/2010 07:07 PM, Greg Troxel wrote:
> I think the 15cm and 30m imagery is not from MassGIS, but was paid for
> by USGS, and massgis has been hosting it.  But I'm not sure.

You may be right. It's not clear (IMO) from the metadata. Fortunately,
it shouldn't matter.

-- 
Lars Ahlzen
lars at ahlzen.com