Remote Sensing Laboratories Aid WRP Monitoring

Last year, the three NRCS Remote Sensing Laboratories (RSLs) began providing a new service to agency State and field staff — aerial photo interpretation for monitoring Wetlands Reserve Program (WRP) easements.  During the first year of this service, the RSLs provided photo interpretation for 3,207 easements from 17 States — about one-third of the total number of easements nationwide.  The WRP imagery is acquired under the USDA Small Area Photography Contract, which is also the source of National Resources Inventory (NRI) imagery.

Now, the Central RSL in Fort Worth, Texas, has developed procedures for use by all RSLs to orthorectify, color balance, dodge, and mosaic high-resolution aerial photography.  The process removes spatial and radiometric distortion from the images and seamlessly joins adjacent photos into a single image covering a WRP easement area.  The process will increase the number of easements that NRCS can review annually by reducing onsite visit time.  This milestone represents a major step forward in the process of monitoring WRP and other easement-based programs through remote sensing.  The instructions were designed to be easily modified to support all agency and departmental programs that lend themselves to monitoring through remote sensing.

As production of easement mosaics commences, products will be delivered electronically through a Web-based image service to any desktop with a broadband Internet connection.  In addition, compressed mosaics will be available for download to mobile devices for field use.

The procedures were developed by Kevin R. Grantham, Geospatial Team Leader at the Central RSL.
Your contact is NRCS Resources Inventory and Assessment Division Director and NRI Data Collection Leader Jerry Harlow at 301-504-2328.