Chris Thompson

Aerial Mapping – California provides an amazing array of services for creating aerial surveys, maps and pictures of California. These services include aerial mapping, surveys, GPS integration, aerial photography, orthophotography, topographic mapping, and aerial volume studies. California has a wide variety of companies and services.

Developers, planners, realtors, civil engineers, and public planners use these companies. Aerial mapping is also used in preparing environmental impact reports. The scale of the surveys can vary from individual property boundaries to reviewing subdivision and township borders.

The GIS, used by many non profit and government agencies, is a topographic map that shows important sites in the community such as fire stations, schools, hospitals, and infrastructure lines such as telephone and electrical. Thus an emergency worker in a city can bring up these locations on a computer screen in times of disaster when regular utility services are not functioning.

Non profit organizations such as the California Coastal Records Project, which produces aerial photographic surveys of the California Coastline, also make use of aerial mapping companies in California. Other non-profits using aerial surveys include Cal State Northridge, California Aerial and Acoustic Sardine Survey, and Whittier College.

Topographic and hydrographic mapping also depends on aerial surveys. The US Forest Service (USFS)and the US Geographical Survey (USGS) use these photos to create topographic and hydrographic maps, which add overlays to the photos to provide elevations for maps of Forest Service and Wilderness lands. The USGS and NASA have jointly managed managed the Land Remote Sensing Satellite system since the early 1970′s. These data are also used by Aerial Mapping Company California.

Aerial photos are distorted by the curve of the earth. In order to correct this distortion, Orthophotography corrects this distortion through computer input so that the photo map shows the same uniform scale as a flat map, but it incorporates the aerial photographs.

You can see that sources for mapping data are very broad. Companies are based throughout the state of California. They provide a variety of services, from surveying and mapping for engineering projects to scenic photographs including hot air balloon rides and even weddings pictured from the air.

There is a strong overlap of networks in this field ranging from University programs to NASA and other government agencies such as USGS. Private companies know how to access the important elements of these networks. Many companies have been in business for years going back to the 1940′s in some cases. The consumer will be well rewarded by researching and comparing the various companies’ demonstrated expertise.

For more information visit California Digital Mapping.