1. Interpreting Arial Photos

2. How would having this skill be useful?

3. 5 areas to understand when evaluating photos
Look for a scale
Look for patterns, shapes, and textures
Define the colors (including shadows)
Find north
Consider your prior knowledge

4. Look for scale Identify places you know
This will help you think about how big something is
Identify the scale of the map
Is scale is not indicated look for something you know the size of to compare

5. Look for patterns, shapes and textures
Straight lines are the result of human land use
Roads, farm fields, buildings, ponds
Bodies of water are easy to identify
Lakes, stream and ocean have unique shapes
Clear cut forests are cut in squares
Planted trees look like they are in straight lines
Different shades of green identify stands of timer that are different ages

7. Patterns and Textures Cont.
Mountain Ranges appear to be long, sometimes wavy lines
Cliffs are squiggly or dark lines framed by a shadow
Mountains look like wrinkles or bumps.

9. Relief Inversion
Sometimes the lighting make mountains look like valleys
Our eye expects the sun to come from the upper left corner.
When the sun is coming from other angles it can be confusing.
You can turn the picture so the light come from the upper left corner.

10. Define Colors Water can be many colors
Clean water absorbs the light and looks black or dark blue
Water with dense sediment looks brown
After rain or an event that can “stir” the pond up
As the water settles it can look green then blue
The sunlight can reflect and look grey, silver or white
Frozen water can look white, gray or slightly blue

11. Plant colors Grassland – pale green Forests - dark green
Agriculture – bright green
Seasons can change the colors

13. Other Colors
Bare or very lightly vegetated ground is usually some shade of brown or tan
Residential areas, cities, and other densely built areas are typically silver or gray

14. Find North
As long as you know where north is you can figure out lots of things
Directions of roads, rivers, mountians

15. Consider your Prior Knowledge
Think about the places that you know and how they look on satellite images
Use that information as you look at other images