Indiana Digital Orthophotography

 

 
 

Compressed with MrSID, organized by county on CD-ROM

You can obtain digital orthophotography of several entire counties for only $15 (price includes shipping and handling).
The orthophotos are available for ordering (check or credit card) from Purdue's Media Distribution Center. The numbers for ordering are CD-AE-1 through CD-AE-29, following the numbering system on the map.

The following gives an overview of ordering options (more information can be found at the Media Distribution Center Web page):

To order by phone, call toll free, 1-888-EXT-INFO (398-4636). Be prepared to give the publication number. Orders may be purchased using
     your Master Card, Visa, or Novus charge card, or an invoice will be sent if amount of order is $5.00 or more. An invoice will follow approximately four
     to six weeks after you receive the shipment. Charges against credit cards (Master Charge, Visa, Novus) must be accompanied by the full card number and expiration date, the cardholder's signature, and a daytime phone number on the order form.
To order by mail, print the order form and mail to the address printed on the order form.
To order by E-mail, send your order to Media.Order@ces.purdue.edu. Be sure to include the quantity, publication number, title, unit price, and
     total. Same rules as above apply.
To order by fax, dial (765)496-1540. Be sure to transmit the quantity, publication number, title, unit price, and total. Same rules as above apply.
 

How the 92 Indiana counties are organized on the 29 CD's

1       Lake, LaPorte, Porter

2       St. Joseph, Elkhart, Lagrange
3       Steuben, Noble, DeKalb
4       Jasper, Newton, Benton
5       Pulaski, Starke, Fulton
6       Marshall, Kosciusko, Whitley
7       Allen, Adams, Wells
8       White, Cass, Carroll
9       Miami, Wabash, Huntington
10      Warren, Fountain, Vermillion, Parke
11      Tippecanoe, Montgomery, Clinton
12      Howard, Tipton, Grant, Madison
13      Delaware, Blackford, Jay
14      Putnam, Owen, Clay
15      Boone, Hamilton, Hendricks, Marion
16      Hancock, Shelby, Rush
17      Henry, Randolph, Wayne
18      Vigo, Sullivan, Greene
19      Monroe, Morgan, Johnson
20      Brown, Bartholomew, Jackson
21      Decatur, Franklin, Union, Fayette
22      Knox, Daviess, Martin
23      Lawrence, Orange, Washington
24      Scott, Jefferson, Switzerland
25      Jennings, Ripley, Dearborn, Ohio
26      Posey, Vanderburgh, Warrick
27      Gibson, Pike, Dubois
28      Spencer, Perry, Crawford
29      Harrison, Floyd, Clark
 

The orthophotography for Indiana is a result of a joint effort by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), Farm Services Agency (FSA), and U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).  Most were developed from aerial photos taken in 1998, with some from 1999. The NRCS National Cartography and Geospatial Center in Fort Worth processed them further before making them available through the NRCS Indiana State Office. Uncompressed, the orthophotography for all of Indiana is about 125 Gigabytes (about 250 CD-ROMs), meaning that several CDs are necessary for each county. Purdue University Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering compressed them using MrSID, and organized them by county on a series of CD-ROMs for wider distribution.

The orthophotos have been compressed with MrSID, an image format that allows for a high compression ratio and fast access of large amounts of data at any scale. MrSID is an acronym for Multi-resolution Seamless Image Database. These images can be used in any software package that can interpret images compressed with MrSID.

The CD-ROM series was produced by:
Jane Frankenberger, Assistant Professor
Larry Theller, GIS Specialist
Mark Ehle, GIS Specialist
Bernard Engel, Professor
Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering
Purdue University
 

Software for viewing the MrSID-compressed orthophotos

Many software programs can interpret images compressed with MrSID. We have listed free viewers and GIS software that can easily open these images.
Free software

Commercial GIS and CAD Software
Free plug-ins for common software products such as Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Office products, and Web browsers are also available. For more information on current software that supports MrSID imagery, or on MrSID compression, see <http://www.lizardtech.com>.

Reference to products is not intended to be an endorsement to the exclusion of others which may be similar.

Geographic information about the orthophotos

The geographic extent of the digital orthophoto is equivalent to a quarter-quadrangle (3.75 minutes of latitude and longitude), plus 50 to 100 meters of overlap. Each image covers roughly 10,000 acres.

The uncompressed resolution is 1 meter. Resolution is the minimum distance between two adjacent features, or the minimum size of a feature that can be detected by a remote sensing system. The quality of the image is slightly degraded due to the compression in MrSID.

The projection used for these photos is Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM). The datum is the North American Datum of 1983 (NAD83), with coordinates in meters.

The orthophotos conform to National Map Accuracy Standards at the scale of 1:12,000. This means that 90 percent of the well-defined points tested must fall within 33.3 feet (1/30 inch) of their actual position.

The images on this CD-ROM have been compressed by a factor of ten. Each quarter quad is approximately 5 MB, and the entire state is about 12.5 gigabytes compressed at this ratio.