Unlocking Lost Landscapes: Rigorous Geometric Correction of Declassified CORONA Images for the Non-Photogrammetrist
Abstract
The archive of declassified, Cold War-era CORONA satellite imagery, collected as part of the world's first intelligence satellite imaging program from 1960-1972 is unique - a high-resolution view of nearly the entire globe as it appeared nearly 50 years ago. These 860,000 images, made publicly available in 1996, have proven to be a critical resource in archaeology, primarily because they preserve a picture of sites and landscapes that predates recent agricultural, industrial and urban development. Such land use changes have often resulted in archaeological features being obscured or destroyed, and CORONA therefore enables archaeologists to reconstruct and virtually explore lost landscapes. For many of the same reasons, CORONA imagery is an invaluable resource for both human and physical geographers as well as climate and environmental scientists. While digital scans of CORONA images can be purchased and downloaded through the USGS, these uncorrected images contain extreme spatial distortions created by the satellites' unusual stereo panoramic cameras. Commercial software packages are currently unable to geometrically correct CORONA images, and without doing so, these images cannot be used in mapping or GIS applications. In this paper, we discuss SUNSPOT; an web-based application that allows the public to upload CORONA images, measure ground control points, and produce orthorectified GeoTiff images as well as Replacement Sensor Model (RSM)-enabled NITF formatted images for use in a wide variety of open-source and commercial GIS software. We will address implementation details as well as potential applications in the geosciences.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFM.B23J2673C
- Keywords:
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- 0439 Ecosystems;
- structure and dynamics;
- BIOGEOSCIENCESDE: 0480 Remote sensing;
- BIOGEOSCIENCESDE: 1632 Land cover change;
- GLOBAL CHANGEDE: 1807 Climate impacts;
- HYDROLOGY