The Value of Old Images - Lonely, Alaska

Across the U.S., and the world, there are vast archives of historic aerial imagery. I think people often wonder; what is the real value of these old images? I think that when used properly these old images can tell amazing stories. Do they tell these stories sitting on a shelf or in a file cabinet, unmarked and aging badly? Not really.

The stories can only be told when these old aerial images are used together with modern data and only when we can use them in a modern GIS or desktop application like Google Earth. This is what we do with DroneMap. Far North helps you take imagery, historic or modern, and make useful, GIS-ready products.

A good example of what we can learn from these images is the case of Lonely, Alaska. I love this place just for it's name. Many places in Alaska are lonely. In fact, you could argue that most of Alaska is lonely, given that we have the most land and nearly the fewest people of any state in the U.S. However, only one place that I know of is actually called Lonely, Alaska. It is an old radar station that is part of what was known as the Distant Early Warning, or DEW Line. I've never been there, and likely never will. In fact, in the next few decades there may no longer be a Lonely, Alaska. You see, Lonely, Alaska is falling into the sea. To be specific, it is falling into the Beaufort Sea. How can I say this without ever having been there? Historic imagery, of course.

Some of the best imagery of Lonely was collected around 1980. It was part of an aerial imagery program that collected stereo photography of the whole state. These images were then scanned by the USGS and made available for download. At Far North we took these timages and ran them through our DroneMap process. This allowed us to analyze these images in a modern context.

The following figures show the clear impact of coastal erosion using historic and modern orthoimagery.

Figure 1. A DroneMap orthomosaic showing the air station at Lonely, Alaska (upper left corner) in 1980

Figure 2. Modern orthoimagery from SPOT-5 covering the same geographic region as Figure 1

Figure 3. Modern (blue) and historic (yellow) coastlines for the region around Lonely, Alaska.

In Figure 3, we see the clear impact of change in this area. The region just to the east of the Lonely runway is losing coastline at approximately 20m (60ft) per year over this time period. I'm not sure that there are people in Lonely any longer or anyone else to observe this change. However, we can see it clearly here thanks to the combination of historic and modern imagery. Perhaps in 50 years we will need a new place to call Lonely, because this one will probably be gone.

While not all places are changing this rapidly, many applications can benefit from historic imagery, when it is processed into a usable form. What can your historic data do for you? Contact Far North and see how we can help.

#imagery #orthorectification #DroneMap #orthoimages #coastalerosion #erosion #Alaska #climatechange #Lonely #ahap #aerial #dewline