Indiana Spatial Data Portal

Dataset Basics

The National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP) acquires imagery during the agricultural growing seasons in the continental United States. The purpose of the program is to provide current information regarding agricultural conditions in support of the United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) farm programs. The total cost of the Indiana 2008 NAIP program was $480,522.00. The Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) contributed $185,000.00 to the total cost with the balance paid by the Farm Service Agency (FSA) and other USDA agencies. INDOT uses the statewide orthophotography for planning, safety, design, tracking changes in development and permit monitoring.

The 2008 NAIP program provided data as quarter quadrangle tiles in JPEG2000 uncompressed format and as county mosaics in compressed (15:1 target compression) JPEG 2000 format. The FSA created the compressed county mosaic product to provide timely information for the FSA compliance program. Photo Science, the Indiana acquisition vendor, acquired the imagery using Intergraph’s Z/I Imaging Digital Mapping Camera (DMC), a framing camera which takes simultaneous color and color infrared digital images. Image acquisition began June 24, 2008, and ended September 1, 2008.

The 2008 NAIP dataset includes polygons (shapefile format) delineating the seam boundaries between acquired imagery used in the creation of the quarter quadrangle images and the county mosaics. Users can use these polygons as a tool to determine the image source date for each portion of the dataset. The metadata for each quarter quad image includes the source date of the image.

The Indiana 2008 NAIP program implemented two major changes from previous years: terrain correction to true ground position and acquisition of four band imagery (red, green, blue, and near infrared frequencies). All images were rectified to true ground control points, rather than existing imagery as in previous years to improve accuracy. INDOT personnel worked closely with NAIP staff to acquire ground control points used for quality assurance assessments. Users may view the 4 band imagery either as natural color or color infrared images by changing the band display options. The cost of adding the fourth band to the deliverable product was not significantly more than the cost of a 3 band image acquisition and provided users with more information.

Photo Science captured the dataset over an eleven week period using three different DMC cameras. Their staff captured the southern portion of Indiana in late June and even though a common look up table was used for processing, factors such as humidity, haze, and sun angle affected the final results of the imagery. Although FSA planned for one flying season, flooding in 2008 required Photo Science to capture the northern part of Indiana in mid August essentially creating two flying seasons.

USDA staff presented Geospatial Data and the APFO: Past, Present and Future at the 2008 ESRI International Users' Conference. This presentation is available to view online or download in pdf format. The document includes information regarding the history of the NAIP program, innovations implemented in 2008, and future changes in data acquisition.

Available Datasets

File Formats

County Mosaics

Coordinate System: UTM, Zone 16 North, NAD83
Units: meters :
Pixel Type and Depth: Unsigned integer, 8 Bit:
Bands: 4 (Red, Green, Blue, and Near Infrared) represent brightness values 0 - 255
File format: JPEG2000 wavelet compression (15:1 target compression ratio)

Quarter Quadrangles

Coordinate System: UTM, Zone 16 North, NAD83
Units: meters
Pixel Type and Depth: Unsigned integer, 8 Bit
Bands: 4 (Red, Green, Blue, and Near Infrared) represent brightness values 0 - 255
File format: GeoTIFF and ECW (15:1 target compression ratio)

Raster Dataset in Geodatabase INMAP

Available to restricted users with accounts

Dataset Contact Information

The FSA contact in Salt Lake City:

The Farm Service Agency (FSA).

The FSA 2008 Indiana NAIP vendor, Photo Science, Inc., collected imagery for this dataset.

For technical support regarding dataset downloads and imagery formats, please contact uitsgis@iu.edu.