About the Satellite Images
I recently discovered a web site, http://geoengine.nima.mil, which has a map-based search engine that allows different areas to be selected, and then formats tiles of unrestricted SPOT satellite images So I used it to create a series of 39 tiles in the region from 35 N, 34 E (northwest corner) to 29 N, 40 E (southeast corner) that contains Jordan and Israel, and parts of their neighbors. Most tiles cover an area that is one degree east-west (a few are 1.1 degrees) and one half degree north-south. The images are from the DOI-10M - National Imagery and Mapping Agency, and contain data that is copyrighted, (C) CNES/SPOT Image 1992-1994, but their use is unrestricted, in accordance with the License Information shown below.
The sample image here is a full-size clip
of the Azraq oasis, so you can see what the resolution is like. The
images are panchromatic, digitally orthorectified, 10 meter resolution, GeoTiff, in WGS 84.
This means that they are black-and-white, corrected for camera tilt,
and the image is spatially registered. They can be loaded directly into
ArcView and used as background images, and other data from ESRI's Digital Chart
of the World data pack (or any unprojected shapefile data) can be overlaid directly on top of them. For
example, in the large image of the whole region, shown below, I simply
overlaid boundaries from ESRI's Country.shp shapefile on the image tiles in
ArcView, then exported the image as a .bmp file, which I then opened in
Paintshop Pro and converted to .gif format for the web page. I used another small
program to turn it into an image map.
Any information recorded with a GPS unit in decimal degrees will be placed properly on the images. The files are quite large (46 to 61 mb each, depending on the nature of the image). If you want to work with just a piece of one image, or several, you can download the tiles you want and clip them in ArcView with an extension that can be downloaded freely from ESRI's ArcScripts page, http://www.esri.com/arcscripts. An extension called "Crop2.avx" will let you clip out a portion of the image, and it automatically creates a "World File," which is required by ArcView to spatially register the cropped image. (The tiles don't need the world file because the registration information is embedded in the image itself--that's why they are called geotiff files).
License Information
This data is provided by the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA). It contains 10 Meter Resolution Digital Orthorectified Imagery (DOI-10M) derived from data obtained from the SPOT Image Corporation under an unrestricted license.
License Tier - "Unrestricted License - permits distribution of the imagery and imagery products to any entity or person. The unrestricted license (including unlimited reproduction and distribution) will pass through to all those who acquire the imagery and/or imagery products. That is, this product is available for all users. No additional permission is needed to use or distribute this product. Inclusion of the "(C) CNES/SPOT Image 1992-1994" copyright notice is required on all duplications of this product and on all products which contain a literal image from the DOI-10M product. Information extracted from DOI-10M, such as line drawings or road centerlines, as well as other non-literal products, such as coordinates or textual reports not having image chips, do not require the copyright notices."
Downloading the Images
This photo-mosaic of the region is an image map that lets you request a specific tile by simply clicking on the picture. Each tile is delivered as a zip file, along with a copy of the licensing information in .rtf format. Even zipped, the files are large, and can take a while to download. A word to the wise: the whole set of tiles, once unzipped, takes up about 1.95 gb of disk space.
Other digital data for the southern Levant can be found by following these links:
- Digital Chart of the World data, at 1:1,000,000 scale
- LandSat 28m resolution 5 band false color satellite images
- 1:50,000 scale topographic maps (new Arabic series)
- True color LandSat 14.25m resolution satellite images are available from the GAIA Lab. Press the "Landsat True Color" button on that page.
