These data are prepared for use by the Natural Resources Conservation Service for USDA Service Center personnel to administer agency programs.
The camera calibration report provides the length of the camera and the distances in millimeters from the optical center to the camera's 8 fiducial marks. These marks define the field of reference for spatial measurements made from the photograph. Ground control points acquired from ground surveys or developed in aerotriangulation, are third order class 1 or better, and meet National Map Accuracy Standard (NMAS) for 1:12,000-scale. Ground control points are in the Universal Transverse Mercator or the State Plane Coordinate System on NAD83. Horizontal and vertical residuals of aerotriangulated tie-points are equal to or less than 2.5 meters. Standard aerotriangulation passpoint configuration consists of 9 ground control points, one near each corner, one at the center near each side and 1 near the center of the photograph, are used. The conjugate positions of the ground control points on the photograph are measured and recorded in camera coordinates.
The raster image file is created by scanning an aerial photograph film diapositive with a precision image scanner. An aperture of approximately 25 to 32 microns is used, with an aperture no greater than 32 microns permitted. Using 1:40,000-scale photographs, a 25-micron scan aperture equates to a ground resolution of 1-meter. The scanner converts the photographic image densities to gray scale values ranging from 0 to 255 for black and white photographs. Scan files with ground resolution less than 1 meter or greater than 1 meter but less than 1.28 meters are resampled to 1 meter. The principal elevation data source (DEM's) are standard datasets from the National Digital Cartographic Data Base (NDCDB). DEM's that meet USGS standards are also produced by contractors to fulfill DOQ production requirements and are subsequently archived in the NDCDB. All DEM data is equivalent to or better than USGS DEM standard level 1. The DEM used in the production of DOQ's generally has a 30-meter grid post spacing and possesses a vertical RMSE of 7-meters or less. A DEM covering the extent of the photograph is used for the rectification. The DEM is traversed from user-selected minimum to maximum X-Y values and the DEM X-Y-Z values are used to find pixel coordinates in the digitized photograph using transformations mentioned above. For each raster image cell subdivision, a brightness or gray-scale value is obtained using nearest neighbor, bilinear, or cubic convolution resampling of the scanned image. The pixel processing algorithm is indicated in the header file . An inverse transformation relates the image coordinates referenced to the fiducial coordinate space back to scanner coordinate space. For those areas for which a 7.5-minute DEM is unavailable and relief differences are less than 150 feet, a planar-DEM (slope-plane substitute grid) may be used. Rectification Process: The photo control points and focal length are iteratively fitted to their conjugate ground control points using a single photo space resection equation. From this mathematical fit is obtained a rotation matrix of constants about the three axes of the camera. This rotation matrix can then be used to find the photograph or camera coordinates of any other ground X-Y-Z point. Next a two dimensional fit is made between the measured fiducial marks on the digitized photograph and their conjugate camera coordinates. Transformation constants are developed from the fit and the camera or photo coordinates are used in reverse to find their conjugate pixel coordiates on the digitized photograph. Quality Control: All data is inspected according to a quality control plan. DOQ contractors must meet DOQ standards for attribute accuracy, logical consistency, data completeness and horizontal positional accuracy. During the initial production phase, all rectification inputs and DOQ data sets are inspected for conformance to standards. After a production source demonstrates high quality, inspections will be made to 10% of delivery lots (40 DOQs per lot). All DOQ's are visually inspected for gross positional errors and tested for physical format standards.
Softcopy in Adobe Acrobat Portable Document File (PDF) format: <http://rockyweb.cr.usgs.gov/nmpstds/doqstds.html>