Low Altitude Aerial Color Digital Photographic Survey of the San Andreas Fault in the Carrizo Plain

David K. Lynch, Kenneth W. Hudnut, & David S. Dearborn

Published 2010, SCEC Contribution #1406

We report a new, high resolution, low-cost, color digital photographic survey of the San Andreas Fault. The geolocatable imagery covers a 92 km long section of the fault in Kern and San Luis Obispo counties, California, and includes the entire Carrizo Plain. The survey produced 1454 oblique digital photographs (4288 x 2848 pixels, average 6 Mb each) from an elevation of approximately 150m above ground level (AGL). The spatial resolution is a few cm and varies systematically across the vertical field of view. Time and geographic coordinates of the aircraft were automatically written into the EXIF data within each photograph. Additionally, simultaneous high definition (HD) video was obtained. The 8.7 Gb jpeg format data set was obtained at a cost of about $5000 USD including the camera, and has been placed in the public domain. Less than two days after acquisition, the photographs were validated and uploaded to a webpage. The goal was to obtain low-cost, high-resolution, overlapping and contiguous imagery for use in planning field operations, and to provide imagery for a wide variety of land use and educational studies.

Citation
Lynch, D. K., Hudnut, K. W., & Dearborn, D. S. (2010). Low Altitude Aerial Color Digital Photographic Survey of the San Andreas Fault in the Carrizo Plain. Seismological Research Letters, 81, 453-459.