I was just doing some looking around on Google Earth and thought it would be interesting to see how NE SD and the Devils Lake area looked in the early 90’s and before, but for the majority of these areas it looks like 1998 is the farthest data available. Does anyone know of any other places, besides Google Earth, I could get these images of from earlier years?
Doctor Sonar has this. goes back to 1949
USGS has imagery back to the 30’s in some places. It is very interesting to see what it used to look like. When I lived out there I did this a bunch. I downloaded the historical imagery, georeferenced it and then punched pts into my GPS. It was interesting to see what was still out there on the lake floor and what wasn’t. I moved away before I got to really figure out what structures held the most fish though.
MN has a host of resources for older aerial orthophotos, primarily through the U of MN and DNR –
John Borchert Map Library has most of them – https://www.lib.umn.edu/apps/mhapo/
DNR has some more recent ones as they pertain to forest resources –
http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/airphotos/search.html
Most other states are similar in that what they have completely depends upon the agencies that control GIS work regionally. USGS and others as above mentioned, have been doing a better job lately data-wharehousing and centrally locating more of these historcial datasets as well.
ND has a few options:
http://www.nd.gov/gis/apps/HubExplorer/
http://nd.water.usgs.gov/devilslake/imagery.html
https://lta.cr.usgs.gov/Photo_Reference_Mosaics – This page directs you to the USGS Earth Explorer link that’ll help you find 1940’s – 1980’s imagery.
Hopefully this helps. I know if I fished Devils more, I’d certainly be locating as many old features as I could. The Lakemaster map does a good job of defining structure, and you could infer bottom hardness from many of these maps, but some aerial photo interp would definitely help define other hard-bottom locations that were previously above water. That is, if time hasn’t covered them with silt. Good luck in your search!
Joel
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