**Narration**

**Past**

This video chronicles the Aerial Photography Field Offices (APFO)
creation and how it currently supports FSA farm programs using
geospatial technology.

The USDA was established by Abraham Lincoln in 1862.

The 1^st^ modern farm program, the Agricultural Adjustment Act was
created in 1933 to cope with the effects of the great depression.

In 1940, the aerial photography labs were created to support this
program. They were first located in Washington, DC. Before moving to
Salt Lake City, Utah and Asheville, NC. In 1976, they were consolidated
into one location in Salt Lake City.

Once in Salt Lake City the aerial photography labs became the Aerial
Photography Field Office. APFO stores over 10 million aerial photo's
taken from 1955 to the present which represent different imagery
programs. These include the National High Altitude Program and the
National Aerial Photography Program.

APFO also store images for other USDA agencies including NRCS and the
Forest Service.

These along with the 35mm image program were used to hand draw the
precursor to CLU. The hand drawn CLU and imagery were used to calculate
acreage for FSA farm programs.

In the mid 1990's APFO began to use Geographic Information Systems
extensively. GIS allows for multiple layers of information to be
analyzed at once by combining data, people, methods, hardware and
software together.

GIS allowed APFO to integrate its aerial photos with hardware and
software in collaboration with its wealth of geographic knowledge to
bring new benefits to FSA and its customers.

With the implementation of GIS, the paper based CLU was then digitized
using the scanned paper CLU and the USGS MDOQ imagery to create a gis
layer.

**Current Operations**

In early 2003, the National Agriculture Imagery Program was created.
NAIP is flown leaf on during the growing season in high resolution in at
least several different states yearly.

APFO handles all contracting, flight planning, inspection, delivery,
archiving and customer support of NAIP. Once NAIP is acquired and
delivered, it requires several steps of inspection to be fully accepted.

First Compressed County Mosaics files are verified to check the file
name and structure. If these check out then they are immediately sent to
the FSA State and County Offices.

CCM's are sent immediately due to the importance of timely images for
compliance programs.

Inspection of the tiles requires several levels and steps of accuracy
before the imagery is accepted. This includes checking for proper
brightness, contrast and color and checking for images distortions,
overlap and cloud cover.

Once inspection is complete, the imagery is stored digitally on APFO's
state of the art servers and any negatives or film is stored in the
vault.

From these locations, the imagery is available to the public through
APFO's sales department in hardcopy prints, digital form on cds, DVDs,
or hard drives. It also can be downloaded on the web through the
geospatial data gateway or ordered online through APFO's online ordering
system.

All historic imagery is also available upon request from APFO.

When the FSA county offices receive new NAIP imagery, they use it to
update the countywide CLU layer.

This process entails locating new or changed field boundaries which are
enrolled in FSA programs. The imagery is then loaded in ArcMap and the
CLU is created around the borders of a farmer's field. The attribute
information is then input and saved with the geometric boundary, this is
done until all CLU are created and populated for the county.

At the state and county offices, NAIP is used for several other GIS
related activities such as base mapping, measurement services,
environmental issues and many others.

**Future Plans**

APFO will continue to handle all contracting, flight planning,
inspection, delivery, archiving and customer support for NAIP.

There are many possible enhancements for NAIP. The following are several
potential examples: A move to absolute control accuracy, higher
resolution imagery, multispectral images which include the near infrared
band and more accurate seam line files which contain exactly when each
image was collected.

The CLU replication process would potentially consist of checking the
CLU for geometric errors and making sure, the CLU ids match the farm
record program ids in the database in Kansas City.

If the CLU do not match the farm records then a report would be sent to
the county requesting that the CLU be updated to match. In some cases,
it is possible that the farm records would be update to match the CLU.

In this example, the CLU calculated acreage does not match the farm
records acreage. The FSA county office finds the CLU and updates its
boundaries to match changes in the imagery and the farm records
database.

When completed CLU and farm records would be one complete geospatial
dataset. This dataset will provide untold analysis opportunities as land
use and crop type will now be associated with the CLU continually.

IFSAR and LIDAR technologies are other imaging techniques which will be
tested to gauge their usefulness in crop and land use identification
processes in areas which aerial imagery is hard to obtain.

APFO is also preparing for the possibility of a new aerial imagery
program called Imagery for the Nation. It seeks to pool governmental
resources to create one high quality set of images for the entire
country.

Imagery and CLU products will continue to be available in hard copy
formats, on cds and hard drives and on the web through the geospatial
data gateway and the online ordering system.

APFO plans to create methodologies for custom applications to support
state and county offices utilizing NAIP and CLU, this includes support
for natural disasters.

Specific examples include Hurricane Katrina, the summer 2007 floods in
Kansas and the summer 2007 wildfires in Utah and California.

Changes thru time in FSA imagery will also be studied to determine the
effects of urban sprawl on land use and crops.

CLU could be analyzed to see how acreage enrolled in farm programs has
changed thru the years.

APFO will continue to contract, flight plan, inspect, deliver, archive
and provide customer support for geospatial data to ensure the high
quality and growth of FSA programs well into the future.

Contact Information:

Nathan Pugh

Cartographer/GIS Specialist

USDA-FSA Aerial Photography Field Office

2222 W 2300 S

Salt Lake City, UT 84119

801-844-2927

nathan.pugh@slc.usda.gov