Imagery data for the Vegetation Mapping Inventory Project of White Sands National Monument

This reference contains the imagery data used in the completion of the baseline vegetation inventory project for the NPS park unit. Orthophotos, raw imagery, and scanned aerial photos are common files held here.

Initially, the 2005 New Mexico statewide acquisition Digital Ortho-photo Quarter Quads (DOQQs) were used as the foundation imagery for the vegetation map . These DOQQs came as separate natural color and color-infrared sets which altogether gathered four separate bands of spectral reflectance values from the visible blue to the near-infrared (NIR) wavelengths at a 1-m spatial resolution. These four separate bands were combined into one file and then mosaicked together. The ortho-photo mosaic was resampled to a 2-m spatial resolution. All imagery and other spatial data layers were compiled into a geodatabase and GIS using ArcGIS 10.4 (ESRI 2008). To support the mapping process, we acquired a standard set of relevant spatial data layers including digital elevation models, digital raster graphics (DRGs) of 1:24,000-scale USGS topographic maps, roads, ownership, geology (Hawley et al. 2005; Fryberger 2001) and soils (USDA-NRCS 2017).