Alaska High Altitude Photography: Denali Highway collection

NASA Johnson Space Center operated a U-2 high-altitude aircraft for remote sensing data collection in support of a variety of earth resources research and management programs. This support was available for federal, state, and local government agencies and nonprofit research groups on a cost-reimbursable basis. One such campaign was conducted in 1977 for the U.S. Department of Forestry over Alaska’s Denali Highway. This 137 mi unpaved road connects Paxson and Catwell, Alaska, and is popular for sightseeing and access to the adjacent mountains for hunting and recreation.
High-altitude photographs were taken in color infrared (CIR) which accentuates the differences between land cover types: water, healthy and diseased trees, moist and dry soils, and different vegetation types. It is particularly sensitive to the high infrared reflectance of vegetation, and is therefore used extensively for land classification, where healthy vegetation appears red. Because CIR does not record the low end of the visible spectrum (blue light), it penetrates haze, a distinct advantage over natural color photography.

The data set offered on this web page constitutes 65 CIR photographs of the Denali Highway corridor. Individual images have not been corrected for the regional topography and thus contain all of the photographic distortions associated with aerial photography. Each scene has been scanned to produce a high-resolution digital image. The geographic location of each image is displayed in Google Map. By pressing Ctrl and left mouse button on any given polygon, one can access a browse image and metadata for the associated image. In addition, one can download a full resolution GeoTIFF or a compressed jpeg image. Although this imagery is several decades old, it offers the most comprehensive high-resolution image mosaic of this popular region.