One of the most helpful tools for planning and knowing your property is an aerial view. Available free on the Internet are United States Geological Survey (USGS, that produces the topographic maps) Orthographic aerial photos. These are photos with the distortions of the photographic process corrected, so that it is a genuine map. Even on my old machine at home, a Pentium 120 and a 28.8 modem, can download the photos fairly quickly. With newer equipment, the download is quicker. The internet address is:
http://terra server.homeadvisor.msn.com/default.asp. The site is modified quite often and more materials are added. There is another version, but it is a commercial site and the products are available for a fee at http://www.terraserver.com.

When you get to the homepage, you see a map of the world with The United States, Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico colored green. These are the areas that are covered by the orthographic photos. I believe other parts of the world may be available again, but that's unsure. To get to the photos, there are three ways. First, you can just double click the mouse on the area desired. Second, there is "Find a specific place" by typing in, for example, "Molalla, Or, USA" and clicking on the "go" button, or third, double clicking your mouse on "Advanced Find". With this method, you can list the city, state, country, or specific place, or use Latitude and Longitude coordinates if you have them. Each photo has the latitude and longitude of the center point of the photo indicated as well as the scale of the photo displayed under the image.

To locate oneself, there is a smaller topographic map to the left of the photo to guide you in your movements to find your farm. It shows a greater area than that of the photo. I find that having a good road map of the area helps me zero in on the target quicker by being able to see the patterns on the photo easier and recognizing what I am looking at. There are three choices for the image size. They are all at the same scale, 16-meter resolution, but show more of the surrounding area with the choice of medium or large image sizes. If you want a larger scale, you can double click the mouse on the area of the photo you want bigger. With each double click of the mouse it will go from 16 meter resolution (1"=1 mile), to 8, to 4, to 2 and finally 1 meter resolution which is a scale 1'=300'. This is a size that gets down to the details. There is also a small bar scale above the photo which can be moved directly to achieve the same result but will be the whole photo, not just the area you select.

If you want to print the photo there are a few ways to get a better print. Orient the paper choice to Landscape so the photo will fit on the 81/2' x11' paper. It will also give a better image with better details if you adjust the printer quality to the highest quality of print. Draft mode just doesn't cut it. If you want to save the photo to your hard drive, it is necessary to find the link "download" on the upper right corner above the photo and follow the instructions. You can save the page by clicking on save, but the photo will not be there when you open the file. When I download the photo (using Microsoft Office, Professional Edition) the file goes into software program "Paint." With this program it is possible to draw boundaries, print names, list features and use colors and other sorts of details to highlight the things of interest that you want to. There is other software that allows photos to can be manipulated, altered and otherwise changed, but this is what is on my machines. And of course, if you use photo paper in the printer instead of the standard paper for text, the details and definition of the photo is much better.

The best thing to do is to go to the page and check out the various options. However, if you miss dinner and a nights sleep, I'll disavow any complicity. n

Editor's Note: Ken Humbert is an ODF Service Forester for the Clackamas-Marion District.