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Imagery Collection

Email: map@uoregon.edu
Telephone (541)346-4565
Fax (541)346-1958


The MAP Library holds extensive collections of print and digital aerial imagery, primarily of Oregon.  The collection dates back to 1929 and is updated regularly.  The collections tend to be organized by provenance, that is, by the agency or company that produced the original images. The print collection is NOT open to the public.  Patrons are asked to use our MAP Research Service to gain access to the collection. We have images from agencies such as the USDA Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service (now the NRCS), the Bureau of Land Management, the National Forest Service, and the Oregon Department of Revenue, to name a few.

Historic aerial photography is a valuable research tool for both physical and human geography.  For example, click on the following thumbnails to see how the UO campus has changed through time:

Campus, 1936 Campus, 1952 Campus, 1977 Campus, 1994 Campus, 2005
1936:  From one of our oldest projects, the print of this Army Corps of Engineers image is at a scale of approx. 1:15,000
1952
 1977: at 1:12,000, this image was produced by a private company, Skyview Aerial Survey, Inc.
 1994
 2005:  Note how the buildings are 'stretched' in this USDA image, indicating that it is projected into a geographic coordinate system.

View more UO Campus Aerials

Guides to the Aerial Print Collection

Information about the photography has been organized and annotated for primary coverage of Oregon and Washington cities and towns, which can be downloaded as a complete file or viewed online. For aerial photography within the National Forest and Bureau of Land Management, we have organized and annotated aerial flight projects by their forest name (e.g. Willamette, Fremont, etc..) or district, as in the case of BLM.
Feel free to browse these online or download them for local use.

Digital Imagery

Increasingly, aerial imagery is being captured and used digitally with GIS software.  The MAP Library is currently evaluating how best to offer online access to our digital collections.  We do offer unrestricted access to 1995 1m DOQs in MrSID format for most of northwestern Oregon on our GIS download pages:
The remainder of our digital collections are available only upon request.  Highlights include:
  • University of Oregon Campus, East Eugene,Digital Aerial Photos: 2002
  • Lane Council of Governments 2008 imagery
    Coverage of most non-federal land in Lane County, including:
    • 6" ground-pixels for Eugene, Springfield, and the lower McKenzie River
    • 12" ground-pixels for other towns and county-maintained road corridors
  • 2005 1m color DOQQs in tiff format for Oregon
  • 1994/95 1m grayscale DOQs in tiff format for Oregon
We also have frequently requested selections of the print collection pre-scanned for campus researchers:
  • Mt. Pisgah
  • The confluence of the McKenzie and Willamette Rivers
  • The downtown Portland waterfront north of Burnside.

Sample Photography from our collection:

Available Sample Research Results ---->

About Resolution

Once scanned, the scale of the original printed image becomes unimportant, and difficult to determine without knowing the parameters of how the image was scanned and the scale of the original photograph.  In the digital realm, we more often talk of 'ground pixels':  the real-world size of one pixel in the image.  For example, a photograph with a scale of 1:12,000, scanned at 600 pixels-per-inch, yields an image with 1.667 foot pixels. 

Other sites for Aerial Photography:

Regional Source

National Sources

Out of State Historic Aerial Photography

Maintained by: Colin Kelly, map@uoregon.edu
Last Modified: 08/06/2009