Alaska Mapping Initiative

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The Alaska Mapping Initiative (AMI) is a multi-year mapping program to acquire new geospatial data that will generate more than 11,000 digital maps at a scale of 1:25,000 for Alaska over the next several years. The program is a collaborative effort among the State of Alaska and numerous Federal agencies, including the Environmetal Protection Agency (EPA), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Office of Science and Technology (OSTP), and the Departments of Interior, Defense, Agriculture and Transportation. The USGS purchased an upgrade of an Alaska Department of Natural Resources license to allow the use of Satellite Pour l'Observation de la Terre (SPOT) imagery, which serves as the mapping product base and is used to update map layers such as hydrography and transportation.  Delivery of several final SPOT imagery blocks, which will provide 2.5 m coverage for all but the Aleutian Islands, is expected during summer 2015. New 5-m airborne Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (IfSAR) elevation data are also being acquired to generate contour maps and shaded relief thematic layers. After the summer 2015 radar collection season, new elevation data will have been collected over approximately 60% of the State. This will be the first time that imagery and elevation data and maps will be made available statewide at these higher resolutions. Both the base SPOT imagery and IfSAR data and the resulting map products are being used for a wide variety of science, management, and recreational applications.

Camera, IFSAR / SAR / Radar

Platform
Author Name
Tracy Fuller
Author Email
tfuller@usgs.gov