From the air: the photographic record of Florida's lands

Historical aerial photographs dramatically document changes in Florida’s land use. Between 1938 and 1971, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (U.S.D.A.) created more than 88,000 black and white, 9 x 9 aerial photographs with 2,500 accompanying photomosaic indexes (19381971) of Florida. Flight lines were county based and each flight created dozens of individual aerial photographs, or tiles. Due to the unstable nature of the photographic negative’s sodium nitrate composition, the U.S. government destroyed archival negatives for the earliest photos. As a result, the aging hardcopy photographic prints are all that remain of this historic resource. Originally intended to assist farmers determine accurate assessments for their farms and to provide information on crop determination and soil conservation, today these images provide some of the oldest land use/cover information available. They are used extensively in agriculture, conservation, urbanization, recreation, education, hydrology, geology, land use, ecology, geography, and history.