[Talk-us] USGS Large-Scale Imagery degraded this month :(

[TC Haddad]

http://www.directionsmag.com/pressreleases/usgs-cutting-high-resolution-ortho-imagery-program/479365



On Sun, Dec 18, 2016 at 11:59 AM, Ian Dees <ian.dees at gmail.com> wrote:

> I run the tile.openstreetmap.us server and noticed this change. Thanks
> for finding the USGS link: I saw it a while ago but then couldn't find it
> when I was trying to debug the problems with the server. The
> "usgs_large_scale" layer on tile.openstreetmap.us is now caching the
> USGSNAIPPlus layer, but the URL they provide both has worse imagery and is
> run from a much slower server (so my caching operation takes quite a bit
> longer and results in occasional 404s to the end user).
>
> I will try to contact a couple of the folks I know at USGS (maybe they're
> still on this list and could respond?), but it might be the case that we
> need to request the imagery and build the desired layer ourselves...
>
> On Sun, Dec 18, 2016 at 2:43 PM, David Kewley <david.t.kewley at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> For a lot of my satellite imagery tracing, I've found it very useful to
>> go back and forth between Bing and USGS Large-Scale Imagery, which provides
>> at least 1-m resolution across the U.S., and in some areas (e.g. urban
>> areas) provides nice 1-foot resolution orthoimagery that aligns very well
>> in my local area with Bing imagery.
>>
>> Well, I should say "provided", past tense. For the past couple of weeks
>> or so, I've noticed that the the USGS LSI has seemed to degrade in many of
>> my local imagery tiles, and I've finally looked into why that might be so.
>>
>> For example, at this location, today (current state of imagery tile
>> caching, perhaps mostly local to me?)
>>
>> https://www.openstreetmap.org/edit?changeset=44464607#map=19
>> /33.56194/-117.67451
>>
>> when using USGS LSI, I see the NE, NW, and SW imagery tiles look fine,
>> but the SE tile is much lower quality, clearly from a different set of
>> imagery. I could swear this area was formerly seamless with the good
>> imagery.
>>
>> It looks like this month's degradation is probably a downstream effect of
>> this change:
>>
>> https://www.usgs.gov/news/usgs-national-map-orthoimagery-
>> map-services-transition-and-other-map-service-changes
>>
>> Before USGS made this change, I saw identical imagery if I used iD's
>> built-in USGS LSI, versus using the following setting in Custom imagery in
>> iD:
>>
>> http://whoots.mapwarper.net/tms/{z}/{x}/{y}/0/http://raster.
>> nationalmap.gov/arcgis/services/Orthoimagery/USGS_EROS_Ortho
>> /ImageServer/WMSServer?
>>
>> The OSM built-in USGS LSI was faster than this custom link, I believe
>> because the custom link is dynamic (not cached by whoots), and it takes two
>> round trips, a lookup by iD to whoots, then by whoots to USGS, and probably
>> a dynamic conversion by whoots. I'm not an expert in this, so could easily
>> have some of this wrong.
>>
>> USGS LSI seemed faster -- perhaps it was static on the backend, or cached
>> better or something. The OSM built-in USGS LSI imagery appears to be served
>> by openstreetmap.us, though I know none of the details of how it's
>> served.
>>
>> Anyway now per the above announcement link, the *USGS_EROS_Ortho* URL is
>> deprecated, and is no longer served, and it seems like the following whoots
>> dynamic lookup imagery is the appropriate one, based on the
>> USGS-recommended replacement for the deprecated imagery:
>>
>> http://whoots.mapwarper.net/tms/{z}/{x}/{y}/1/https://servic
>> es.nationalmap.gov/arcgis/services/USGSNAIPPlus/MapServer/WMSServer?
>>
>> Indeed when I use this in the Custom imagery setting in iD, I see the
>> same degraded imagery that the built-in USGS LSI setting now gives me.
>>
>>
>> Can anyone shed further light or corrections on any of this? Any idea
>> whether it's technically possible and legally permissible to have
>> openstreetmap.us serve the older, better USGS LSI instead of the newer,
>> worse stuff? If so, upon further discussion I'd probably support such a
>> move, and possibly even offer to help with the conversion. :)
>>
>> Thanks!
>> David
>>
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>>
>
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