Roads/Power Lines

Linear features of the landscape - may be confused with one another, though roads have more curves & bends to them than do power lines.

Houses & Out Buildings

Found along roads and/or clearings, have fairly regular geometric shape to them.

Water

Dark, uniform appearance. Almost black in aerial photography.

Field/Pasture

Uniformly light colored - may have roughly geometric shape.

Conifer (Softwood) Forest

Aerial photography is usually flown in the early spring before hardwoods have leafed out; as such only conifers (pine, hemlock, spruce) maintain their crown shapes. They appear dark, round and pebble like, and may cast large shadows.

Hardwood Forest

Lacking foliage, hardwood stands appear lightly shaded. Sunlight reaches the forest floor through bare tree branches and trees cast minimal shadow.

Mixed Conifer/Hardwood Forest

A mix of the previous two. When conifers are interspersed with hardwoods they tend to cast larger shadows than in pure stands - but this can depend on the time of day the picture was taken.

The above pictures have a scale of 1687.056:1 - the result of zooming in the standard MapServer map 8X (with default zoom size 2).

At right is a photo illustrating the various features together in the landscape. Here map is zoomed in only half as much (zoomed 4X with zoom size 2) at 26992.897:1.