The National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP) acquires aerial imagery during the agricultural growing seasons in the

continental United States The contiguous United States, also known as the U.S. mainland, officially referred to as the conterminous United States, consists of the 48 adjoining U.S. states and the District of Columbia of the United States in central North America. The te ...

. It is administered by the

USDA The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is an United States federal executive departments, executive department of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that aims to meet the needs of commerc ...

Farm Service Agency The Farm Service Agency (FSA) is the United States Department of Agriculture agency that was formed by merging the farm loan portfolio and staff of the Farmers Home Administration (FmHA) and the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service ...

(FSA) through the Aerial Photography Field Office (APFO) in

Salt Lake City Salt Lake City, often shortened to Salt Lake or SLC, is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Utah. It is the county seat of Salt Lake County, the most populous county in the state. The city is the core of the Salt Lake Ci ...

. A primary goal of the NAIP program is to make digital ortho photography available to governmental agencies and the public within a year of acquisition. This "leaf-on" imagery is used as a base layer for GIS programs in the FSA's County Service Centers, and is used to maintain the Common Land Unit (CLU) boundaries. Projects are contracted each year based upon available funding and the FSA imagery acquisition cycle. Beginning in 2003, NAIP was acquired on a 5-year cycle. 2008 was a transition year, and a three-year cycle began in 2009. Since the NAIP program began in 2003, vendors have been transitioning to digital sensors in imagery acquisition. In 2009, most NAIP imagery will be acquired with digital sensors rather than film cameras. NAIP imagery products are available either as digital ortho quarter quad tiles (DOQQs) or as compressed county mosaics (CCM). The area for DOQQs corresponds to the

USGS The United States Geological Survey (USGS), founded as the Geological Survey, is an government agency, agency of the United States Department of the Interior, U.S. Department of the Interior whose work spans the disciplines of biology, geograp ...

topographic quadrangles. Each image tile covers a 3.75 x 3.75 minute quarter quadrangle plus a 300-meter buffer on all four sides. CCMs are generated by compressing DOQQ image tiles into a single mosaic. All individual tile images and the resulting mosaic are rectified in the UTM coordinate system,

NAD 83 The North American Datum (NAD) is the horizontal datum now used to define the geodetic network in North America. A datum is a formal description of the shape of the Earth along with an "anchor" point for the coordinate system. In surveying, c ...

, and cast into a single predetermined UTM zone. NAIP imagery is typically acquired at a

ground sample distance In remote sensing, ground sample distance (GSD) in a digital photo of the ground from air or space is the distance between pixel centers measured on the ground. For example, in an image with a one-meter GSD, adjacent pixels image locations are 1 me ...

(GSD) with a horizontal accuracy that matches within of photo-identifiable ground control points, although these parameters do change over time. Starting in 2016, new imagery were acquired with a horizontal accuracy of +/-, and starting in 2018, new imagery were acquired with GSD of . The default

spectral resolution The spectral resolution of a spectrograph, or, more generally, of a frequency spectrum, is a measure of its ability to resolve features in the electromagnetic spectrum. It is usually denoted by \Delta\lambda, and is closely related to the resolvi ...

is natural color (Red, Green and Blue, or

RGB The RGB color model is an additive color model in which the red, green, and blue primary colors of light are added together in various ways to reproduce a broad array of colors. The name of the model comes from the initials of the three ...

) but beginning in 2007, some states have been delivered with four bands of data: RGB and

Near Infrared Infrared (IR; sometimes called infrared light) is electromagnetic radiation (EMR) with wavelengths longer than that of visible light but shorter than microwaves. The infrared spectral band begins with the waves that are just longer than those o ...

. Images have no more than 10%

cloud cover Cloud cover (also known as cloudiness, cloudage, or cloud amount) refers to the fraction of the sky obscured by clouds on average when observed from a particular location. Okta is the usual unit for measurement of the cloud cover. The cloud c ...

per quarter quad tile, weather conditions permitting.

Potential changes in licensing

The FSA is considering a program change to availability and licensing for products of the NAIP beyond the 2018 fiscal year. Under review are a switch from a public domain program to a

Commercial off-the-shelf Commercial-off-the-shelf or commercially available off-the-shelf (COTS) products are packaged or canned (ready-made) hardware or software, which are adapted aftermarket to the needs of the purchasing organization, rather than the commissioning of ...

(COTS) licensing model. This change would require all users to begin paying for services and data, an effort that the FSA hopes would supplement 2018 budget reductions and lapses in funding from cost-share partners. A final decision, originally expected on May 1, 2018, was delayed in order to give the FSA additional time to research options for continuing the program. At issue is the acquisition strategy for the data. Options under discussion include eliminating full state coverage to acquire agriculture-only land, restricting coverage to “high value” agriculture states, and/or using the COTS licensing model. FSA and the

Office of Management and Budget The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is the largest office within the Executive Office of the President of the United States (EOP). The office's most prominent function is to produce the president's budget, while it also examines agency pro ...

(OMB) would continue to work towards a positive solution that benefits all stakeholders. The delayed decision meant that the NAIP would remain a public domain program for image data acquired through 2019.

References

External links

USDA-FSA Aerial Photography Field Office
* {{Authority control United States Department of Agriculture Aerial photography