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Color Infrared Digital Orthophoto Quadrangles for the South Florida Ecosystem Area

Project Goal

The South Florida Ecosystem Restoration Program is an intergovernmental effort to reestablish and maintain the ecosystems of south Florida. One element of the restoration effort is the development of a firm scientific basis for resource decision making. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is one of the agencies that provides scientific information as part of the South Florida Ecosystem Program (SFEP). The program, which was begun in fiscal year (FY) 1995, provides multidisciplinary hydrologic, cartographic, geologic, and biologic data that relate to the mainland of south Florida, the Florida Bay, and the Florida Keys and Reef ecosystems.

The objective of this project is to provide color infrared (CIR) digital orthophoto coverage for the entire south Florida ecosystem area. The main advantage of a digital orthophoto is that it gives a measurable image free of distortion.

Therefore, the digital orthophoto for the ecosystem will provide a multiuse base map for identifying natural and manmade feature areas and for determining their extent and boundaries; the map can also be used for the interpretation and classification of these areas.

Digital Orthophoto Characteristics

The standard digital orthophoto produced by the USGS is a black-and-white, color, or color-infrared, 1-meter ground resolution quadrangle image covering 3.75 minutes of latitude by 3.75 minutes of longitude, at a map scale of 1:12,000. This image is called a digital orthophoto quadrangle (DOQ). DOQ's are cast on the Universal Transverse Mercator projection on the North American Datum of 1983. They also have between 50 and 300 meters of over-edge image beyond the primary and secondary datum corner tick extremes; this extra image area is used to facilitate tonal matching and to mosaic adjacent images. Through image mosaicking, two or more rectified images can be combined and joined into one.

Participating Agencies

The following agencies are participating in producing the CIR DOQ coverage of this ecosystem:

• Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FLDEP)
• South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD)
• U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI)
• National Park Service(NPS)

Project Applications

DOQ can be used for various applications. As a layer is a GIS, it can be used for revising vector files planimetric maps, identifying and classifying vegetation and timber stands, routing and analyzing habitat, preparing environmental impact assessments, and planning for emergency evacuation. It can also be used for flood analysis, soil erosion assessment, facility management, and ground water and watershed analysis. One application specific to the ecosystem is as a compilation base for mapping land use in wetlands.

Anticipated Schedule

This project has been divided into 18 subprojects consisting of 1,126 total CIR DOQ's, which will cover approximately 16,468 square miles, including the entire SFWMD and joining to adjacent water management districts. The production schedule has been designed for a flow of DOQ's according to the priority areas established by the participating agencies and funding that has been established over the 1995 and 1996 fiscal years.

For more information:

Caribbean-Florida Water Science Center
U.S. Geological Survey
3321 College Avenue
Davie, FL 33314

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