Coastal aerial imagery allows for a finely detailed visual approach to classifying marine ecosystems remotely. By incorporating both the visible light and infrared wavelength bands, digital orthoimagery is widely used today for the characterization and interpretation of shorelines and nearshore benthic environments. The digital format of the images also allows for a quicker processing turnaround time, as photos can be directly imported into geographic information system (GIS) interfaces to be georeferenced and cateloged. Previous studies, such as Makowski, Finkl, and Vollmer (2016), provided evidence that the use of such aerial photography was effective for the mapping and classification of shallow marine habitats along continental shelves. For example, numerous physiographic realms (e.g., Southeast Distal Florida, Biscayne Bay and Card Sound, Florida Keys, Hawk Channel, Florida Reef Tract, Transitional Tidal Passes) and morphodynamic zones (e.g., Everglades Swampland Systems, Coral Keys, Channel Systems, Backreef, Parabathic Lithic Shelf).

The above imagery contains digital ortho mosaic photographs taken by the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Agricultural Imagery Program (NAIP). Even though originally taken to monitor the agricultural growing seasons in the continental United States, NAIP offers high-resolution digital aerials of portions along coastal and nearshore environments. This particular orthoimagery set (i.e. ortho_fl086_2010_1) was mainly taken because of the proximity of the Turkey Point Nuclear Generating Station to the coast (shown by the vertical cooling canals towards the left of the imagery above) and provided a rectifying horizontal accuracy that matched within 5mof ground control points with less than 10% cloud cover. Digital ortho quarter quad tiles of NAIP imagery were downloaded from the USDA FarmService Agency’s (FSA) Aerial Photography Field Office (APFO) (i.e.  http://apfo.usda.gov/). (Imagery taken 22 November 2010 at a 1 m ground sample distance [GSD], by the United States Department of Agriculture’s [USDA] National Agricultural Imagery Program [NAIP]).

Makowski, C.; Finkl, C.W., and Vollmer, H.M., 2016. Classification of continental shelves in terms of geospatially integrated physiographic realms and morphodynamic zones. Journal of Coastal Research, 32(1), 1-34.