Creation of a Digital Archive of Historical Aerial Photographs for Everglades National Park and the Greater Everglades Ecosystem

Project Investigators: Thomas J. Smith III, Ann M. Foster, John W. Jones Project Personnel: Alisa Coffin, Kelly Watkins, K. M. Capobianco Project Start Date: 2003 End Date: 2004 Work Plans Project Summaries Data Metadata Publications Photos

Summary

The objective of the project is to translate Everglades National Park aerial photo archives into digital format.

A foundation for Everglades restoration must include a clear understanding of the pre-drainage south Florida landscape. Knowledge of the spatial organization and structure of pre-drainage landscape communities such as mangrove forests, marshes, sloughs, wet prairies, and pinelands, is essential to provide potential endpoints, restoration goals and performance measures to gauge restoration success Information contained in historical aerial photographs of the Everglades can aid in this endeavor.

The earliest known aerial photographs, from the mid to late 1920s, resulted in the production of T-Sheets (Topographic Sheets) for the coasts and shorelines of south Florida. The T-Sheets are remarkably detailed, delineating features such as, shorelines, ponds, and waterways, in addition to the position of the boundary between differing vegetation communities. If followed through time changes in the position of these ecotones could potentially be used to judge effects of changes in the landscape of the Everglades ecosystem, providing a standard by which restoration success can be ascertained.

Participants at a recent "Performance Measure Workshop," sponsored by Everglades National Park, realized the importance of translating the Park's aerial photo archives into digital format. The value they represent to the Greater Everglades research community for developing a pre-drainage baseline is great.

Work Plans

• 2003
• 2004

Project Summaries

• 2002
• 2003
• 2004

Data

• 1940 Greater Everglades and South Florida Aerial Photoset (from the data exchange pages)
• Conversion of Historical Topographic Sheets (T-sheets) from Paper to Digital Form: Florida Everglades and Vicinity (Locations from OFR 02-204)
• Conversion of Historical Topographic Sheets (T-sheets) from Paper to Digital Form: Florida Everglades and Vicinity (Mosaics from OFR 02-204)

Metadata

• Aerial Photos of the 1940s (data set metadata)
• Creation of a Digital Archive of Historical Aerial Photographs for Everglades NP and the Greater Everglades Ecosystem (data set metadata)

Publications

Abstracts

• Creation of a Geodatabase of the Digital Aerial Photography Archives for the Greater Everglades of South Florida and the Southern Inland and Coastal System (from the GEER Conference, April 2003)
• Development of Digital Aerial Photography Archives for the Greater Everglades of South Florida (from the GEER Conference, April 2003)
• Mangrove Die-Off in Florida Bay: A Recurring Natural Event? (from the GEER Conference, April 2003)
• Shifts in the Position of the Marsh/Mangrove Ecotone in the Western Florida Everglades (from the GEER Conference, April 2003)

Bibliographies

• Project Bibliography

Fact Sheets

• Historic Aerial Photography of the Greater Everglades Archive and Geodatabase Development (FS-2004-3139, available from the U.S. Geological Survey website)

Maps

• 1834 and 1861 Florida Maps

Open File Reports

• Conversion of Historical Topographic Sheets (T-sheets) from Paper to Digital Form: Florida Everglades and Vicinity (Open File Report 02-204)
• Historical Aerial Photography for the Greater Everglades of South Florida: The 1940, 1:40,000 Photoset (Open File Report 02-327)

Posters

• Changes in the Mangrove/Marsh Ecotones of the Florida Everglades (from the 16th Biennial Conference of the Estuarine Research Federation, November 2001)
• Creation of a Geodatabase of the Digital Aerial Photography Archives for the Greater Everglades of South Florida and the Southern Inland and Coastal System (presented at the 2003 GEER conference)

Photos

• Project Photo Gallery