The U.S. Department of Agriculture Aerial Photography Field Office (APFO) is currently in the process of correcting some color issues with the statewide National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP) data collected over Wisconsin in 2010. Many users have reported an apparent blue “haze” in the imagery, prompting APFO to work with their contractors to adjust the appearance of the entire dataset.
The upshot and net result will be improved imagery available to users throughout the state. Anyone who has already acquired 2010 Wisconsin NAIP imagery may choose to download the data again from WisconsinView or the USDA Geospatial Data Gateway in order to take advantage of the improved color balancing. The problem is strictly cosmetic, so the existing data is fine to use now and in the future if you are happy with the current imagery for your area(s) of interest.
The reprocessing will also delay the Wisconsin DNR’s efforts to re-project the standard UTM-projected imagery into a Wisconsin Transverse Mercator projection.
At this point, we don’t know how long it will take for the updated imagery to make its way to the WisconsinView data portal, nor do we have any estimates on the availability of the imagery in 4-band GeoTIFFs tiled by USGS quarter-quadrangle.
Continue watching the Mapping Bulletin for more updates.