Camp Michaux Visit

Today students in the Aerial Photo Interpretation class visited the site of Camp Michaux near Pine Grove State Park. This site was originally a farm, later a CCC camp, a POW camp, a church youth camp, and finally reverted to forests. We recorded waypoint with a GPS. These will be included in a GIS map. Then we will georeference digitized aerial photos to show how the site changed over time. That part is for a later lab. for today we followed the self-guided from the Cumberland County Historical Society.

Here are a few scenes from today.

 Foundation of a garage that has the inscribed name of a German prisoner on one pier.

 Historical marker

The emblem of the POW camp is inscribed on this stone.

 Checking out the emblem.

Posing at the old fountain, built by the CCC members.

Flagpole from the CCC days. It points to the North.

Walkway lined by spruce trees.

This stairway to nowhere was built by the CCC members. It was used by the church camp groups for photos. 

Surviving wall of the old barn.

Interpreting Airphotos in the Field

Yesterday, students in the Aerial Photo Interpretation class (FORT 230) visited selected sites on the aerial photos they are studying. Using the principles of interpretation: shape, shadow, pattern, association, texture, tone/color, and relative size, they compared the scene on the photo with what is actually on the ground today.

Given that the sets of photos we are using were taken in 1977, the element of time must also be included in the interpretation. Some areas have been harvested and others have grow in from previous harvests. Little of the area has changed through human use, however.

Here is a Google map of the sites the class visited:


View Larger Map

Digital pictures were taken at each stop and then geotagged with the location coordinates. Follow this link to see the geotagged images on a Yahoo Map in Flickr. Picasa albums also offers geotagging on a Google map as shown in this link. Each provider and format has its own advantages. There is probably a universal tool out there to combine these into one view.