It’s taking a little longer than dropping by the one-hour photo shop, but a project creating aerial photographs of the entire state should be completed by May. Lyle Asell of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources says a group of 37 public and private organizations are paying for the photos — which will give the best picture ever of the state. They’ve taken black and white pictures in the past, but never the whole state at once. He says the photos are digital, which means you can go onto a computer and overlay all kinds of information over the picture. Asell says the photos will have numerous uses.As one example, you can go in and measure where you want to put in a buffer strip on a computer and visualize where the strip will actually occur. He says Illinois and Minnesota paid to have photos of their border areas included in the project.Asell the high-tech photos cost one-point-four million dollars.He says they’d like to update the photos every five, and they have enough organizations involved to pay for the venture without it being overly expensive. The photos will be available free to anyone next May via the I-S-U Extension Department website.
