Bayfield County Aerial Photography

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Aerial Photography

If you are looking for an aerial photograph covering a portion of Bayfield County, you might be interested in examining the new digital orthophotography that has recently become available.

An orthophoto is a digital image that is produced by making geometric corrections to traditional aerial photographs. The distortion in aerial photographs is removed by unwarping the effects of terrain, removing the perspective projection of the camera, and by fitting the image to a particular map projection to create an "image map" that has a uniform scale and a known accuracy. Hence, orthophotos can be used as a map whereas uncorrected aerial photographs cannot. In computer systems, they can be integrated with other geographic information providing a rich visual context.

Orthophotos have a variety of uses. They can be viewed and printed at various scales, and are extremely valuable in the development of land information systems and land use planning issues.

Bayfield County is covered by three dates of orthophotography, one from 1992, another from 1998, and, most recently, 2005. '92/'98 were created using black and white National Aerial Photography Program (NAPP) photography at a nominal photo scale of 1:40,000. Each pixel in the resulting digital imagery covers 1-meter on the ground. The 2005 flight contracted by Bayfield County is in natural color at a photo scale of 1:24,000 resulting in higher resolution digital imagery wherein each pixel covers 1-foot on the ground. Some examples of the new orthophotography are shown in the column to the right.

Obtaining Imagery

Our online tool accessible through this web site called MapViewer which will allow users to explore county orthophotography in conjunction with many other map layers, including parcels and land cover. We hope to soon offer the 2005 aerials through this interface.

If you would like to purchase a CD-ROM or DVD of orthophotography covering all or part of Bayfield County, you may do so by contacting the Bayfield County Land Records Department or Download an Order Form. The Order Form contains purchase options, the data duplication fee schedule, as well as an overview of deliverables.

You can also download much of the Bayfield County orthophotography for free at the Microsoft TerraServer web site. While this data is essentially the same as the data available through the Land Records Department, it is not registered to any map projection, preventing it from being used in a geographic information system (GIS).

For technical information on Bayfield County orthophotography, visit our metadata links page.

City of Bayfield images viewed at different scales

1:24,000

1:12,000

1:6,000

1:2,000

Looking for additional Bayfield County aerial photography?

A good place to start your search for aerial photography is the Wisconsin Catalog of Aerial Photography, a comprehensive listing maintained by the State Cartographer's Office of aerial photography acquired by federal, state and local agencies and other groups.