The purpose of this project is to provide a method for FS employees to acquire terrestrial stereo photos and to analysis these photos with a software application. This process has to be designed so that it can repeated over to time to so that change detection and resource monitoring is facilitated. There are two major goals for this project.

Image Acquisition

The first goal will be identifying the equipment and methods necessary to acquire stereo digital images for resource monitoring. This will involve researching the proper geometry and accepted methods required to take images that can be viewed in stereo. In addition to capturing these images it is critical to obtain relevant data and associate that data with each image. This data may include the time, date, GPS coordinates, camera information (focal length, ISO), and project specific data. One of the systems being tested will allow for the automatic placement of GPS coordinates in the image; this data is then transferred to the desktop where the image can be geospatially associated with an Arc coverage or other commercially available GIS solutions.

Software Analysis The second goal of this project will be to evaluate software to analyze the images. ERDAS Imagine will be evaluated to determine if it can be used to extract quantifiable information from the images. This process will be validated through field trials.

Related Links

Ricoh Wireless RDCi700

ERDAS Imagine