UMass Amherst to Dedicate Collection of Aerial Photographs of Massachusetts
April 17, 2008
| Contact: | Daniel J. Fitzgibbons 413/545-0444 |
Pioneering research recorded land use for five decades
AMHERST, Mass. – In the early 1950s, William P. MacConnell, a forestry professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, launched a pioneering effort to map the entire state through aerial photography, an effort that produced nearly 24,000 images over nearly 50 years.
After MacConnell died in March 2007, the collection, including instruments, maps, infrared transparencies and field notes, was acquired from the department of natural resources conservation (formerly forestry and wildlife management) by the W.E.B. Du Bois Library at UMass Amherst. The MacConnell Aerial Photo Collection will be formally dedicated on Friday, April 25 from 5-7 p.m. on the main floor of the library.
MacConnell and his photogrammetry students began using aerial photography to map forests, agricultural fields, wetlands and other land cover, initially in western Massachusetts and later statewide. Their work was eventually expanded to include the mapping of all land use, and the process was repeated at several intervals over nearly five decades to measure the rate and type of land use change.
“Massachusetts was the first state to be entirely mapped by aerial photogrammetry,” says Joseph S. Larson, professor emeritus of natural resources conservation at UMass Amherst and MacConnell’s first graduate teaching assistant.
Photogrammetry is the use of photography to make measurements. MacConnell and his students used strips of overlapping aerial photographs taken in flight paths that covered the entire state. Every point in the state shows up on two photographs in each flight path, and since the adjoining flight paths also overlap, many points show up on four photographs. Since each of the photographs was taken from a different point in the sky, viewing them through a stereoscope provides is a three-dimensional image. Trees, church steeples and hills all rise up from the landscape.
According to Larson, the land use information gathered through the photographic missions was later verified through ground visits and the data was transferred by hand to U.S. Geological Survey maps where the different land use was color-coded.
“MacConnell was the ‘instigator’ of this statewide classification,” says Janice Stone, conservation administrator in South Hadley. “He was a visionary of the idea of doing a land use-land cover map of the whole state. After it was started, people found it really helpful not just for forestry purposes, but also habitat, wetlands and land use change.”
Larson says the photogrammetry research laid the foundation for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s National Wetlands Inventory, a project that hired many UMass Amherst alumni who trained under MacConnell. As a result, he says, UMass Amherst played a major role in calculating the breadth and scope of the nation’s wetlands.
The MacConnell photos are still being used for a variety of purposes, according to Sandra Lillydahl, who oversees the Du Bois Library’s map collection.
“Some coastal researchers were here not too long ago comparing changes in the state’s coastline,” she says. In another instance, a couple who were in a dispute over the resumption of operations at a nearby quarry was able to gather evidence for their claim that the business had been dormant for some time.
Although MacConnell’s brand of photogrammetry has given way to color infrared imaging and other high-tech methods, Larson says his one-time mentor made his mark.
“This was cutting-edge stuff that made people sit up and take notice,” he says. “Mac did it all by piecing together funding from here and there, and it’s had a national impact on land use research.”
The MacConnell Aerial Photograph Collection can be viewed weekdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., on the second floor of the W.E.B. Du Bois Library. For information, call Sandra Lillydahl at 413/545-2397.
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