Orthomosaic imagery of the Los Padres Reservoir delta, Carmel River valley, CA, 2017-11-01

This portion of the data release presents a high-resolution orthomosaic image of the exposed Los Padres Reservoir delta where the Carmel River enters the reservoir. The orthomosaic has a resolution of 2.5 centimeters per pixel and was derived from structure-from-motion (SfM) processing of aerial imagery collected with an unoccupied aerial system (UAS) on 2017-11-01. The raw imagery used to create the orthomosaic was acquired using a UAS fitted with a Ricoh GR II digital camera featuring a global shutter. The UAS was flown on pre-programmed autonomous flight lines spaced to provide approximately 70 percent overlap between images from adjacent lines. The camera was triggered at 1 Hz using a built-in intervalometer. The UAS was flown at an approximate altitude of 100 meters above ground level (AGL), resulting in a nominal ground-sample-distance (GSD) of 2.6 centimeters per pixel. The raw imagery was geotagged using positions from the UAS onboard single-frequency autonomous GPS. Twenty temporary ground control points (GCPs) consisting of small square tarps with black-and-white cross patterns were distributed throughout the area to establish survey control. The GCP positions were measured using real-time kinematic (RTK) GPS, using corrections from a GPS base station located on a benchmark designated SFML, located approximately 1 kilometer from the study area. The orthomosaic image is provided in a three-band RGB format, with 8-bit unsigned integer values compressed using high-quality JPEG compression. The image has been formatted as a cloud optimized GeoTIFF with internal overviews and masks to facilitate cloud-based queries and display.