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Home The Mining Industry Air Photo Interpretation
Air Photo Interpretation

What is air photo interpretation? 

Air photo interpretation
, terrain analysis, image interpretation... all are terms to describe what you see in images of the ground taken from an airplane or satellite.

If you have ever looked out the window when flying in an airplane, you might have noticed how strange and compressed the ground looked.  It takes skill and practice to translate the vertical perspective into ground-based knowledge.

Air photo interpretation is detective work: look for clues in the patterns and shapes on photographs to interpret the geology and history of an area.

 

The First Air Photographs
Obtaining the vertical perspective is a recent human invention.  The first air photos (ca. 1858) were developed in a dark-room fitted in the basket of a hot air balloon, like this 1860 photograph of Boston, the oldest existing air photo.

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