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Archive of Post-Hurricane Isabel Coastal Oblique Aerial Photographs Collected during USGS Field Activity 03CCH01 from Ocean City, Maryland, to Fort Caswell, North Carolina, and Inland from Waynesboro to Redwood, Virginia, September 21 - 23, 2003

Published by U.S. Geological Survey | Department of the Interior | Metadata Last Checked: January 27, 2026 | Last Modified: 2020-10-13T00:00:00Z
On September 21 - 23, 2003, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) conducted an aerial survey along the Atlantic coast, from Ocean City, Maryland, to Fort Caswell, North Carolina, and inland from Waynesboro to Redwood, Virgina. These photos were used to document coastal changes such as beach erosion and overwash caused by Hurricane Isabel and to identify potential landslide areas inland. They may also be used as baseline data for future surveys. The USGS and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) surveyed the impact zone of Hurricane Isabel to better understand the changes in vulnerability of the Nation’s coasts to extreme storms (Morgan, 2009). This report serves as an archive of the post-Hurricane Isabel oblique aerial survey photographs, survey maps, Google Earth files, location tables, navigation files, digital Field Activity Collection System (FACS) logs, and Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) metadata. Attribute data including links to digital scans of the photographs are also provided. Latitude, longitude, and time were gathered simultaneously from three sources: video (with latitude/longitude and time stamps), photographs (with time stamps), and three Precision Lightweight GPS Receiver (PLGR) navigation files (without time) that documented the location of the aircraft. Location data were converted to decimal degrees and merged to create a location and time file that provided estimated location information for where each photograph was taken (see process step below). Slides were digitally scanned as TIFF image files at 3,000 dots per inch and were converted to JPEG images which are provided here. The metadata values for photo creation time, GPS latitude, GPS longitude, GPS position (latitude and longitude), keywords, credit, artist, caption, copyright, and contact were added to each photograph's EXIF header. Refer to the process steps below for more detail on each of these steps.

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