Farmland Inundated A Lake Thompson, South Dakota, USA story
Agriculture
Water
Wildlife
The aerial photo from 1952 is black and white and doesn’t have the infrared imaging capability of Landsat, but it has something that Landsat doesn’t—very high resolution.
It’s possible to locate trees and buildings in this image. Zooming in to an area near the lake is a location that is cultivated cropland. The sharp corners mark the different fields.
Land here is divided into sections of 1 square mile. These extreme closeups show an area of land covering approximately six sections. This area shows three sections across and two sections high.
A closer look shows farm buildings, with a shelterbelt of trees beside them.
Later Landsat images reveal that those fields and structures are underwater.
* = Location of farm structures shown in the aerial photo closeup.
Location
Sep. 24, 1952, USGS Aerial Photo Single Frames — Lake Thompson, South Dakota, USA
Aug. 29, 1984, Landsat 5 (path/row 29/29) — Lake Thompson, South Dakota, USA
July 14, 2002, Landsat 5 (path/row 29/29) — Lake Thompson, South Dakota, USA
Aug. 11, 2018, Landsat 8 (path/row 29/29) — Lake Thompson, South Dakota, USA
Lake Thompson, South Dakota, USA Additional Imagery & Stories
Hydrology
An aerial image from 1952 shows Lake Thompson as a wetland, with about one-third of it as open water. Landsat began observing the area in 1972 with mu...
Wildlife
Lake Thompson is a crucial habitat for migratory birds. The simultaneous presence of open water, shallow mudflats, cattail marshes, and wet meadows of...