Oregon Coast Aerial Seabird Colony Photos, 1988-2009

From 1988 to 2009, the US Fish and Wildlife Service conducted annual aerial surveys to photograph surface-nesting seabird colonies within the Oregon Coast National Wildlife Refuge Complex. More than 63,000 images were captured on 35mm film slides from helicopters at 260-330 meters altitude during late incubation periods. This collection represents a slide catalog of scanned images, digitized to preserve the data from degradation.

Use Cases

• Monitor long-term seabird colony status and distribution based on annual aerial imagery.
• Analyze changes in breeding colony locations over a 22-year period.
• Train computer vision models for wildlife detection and counting in oblique aerial photographs.

Strengths

• Covers a 22-year time series from 1988 to 2009.
• Contains more than 63,000 individual images.
• Surveys were conducted annually with a consistent methodology during the late incubation period.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Original data is analog film slides, which may introduce quality variations in the digital scans.

Provenance

Source

Department of the Interior, US Fish and Wildlife Service.

Collection Method

Aerial photography from helicopters (or planes) using 35mm cameras with 100-400mm lenses.

Time Range

1988 - 2009

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-04 08:27:10.503367; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Oregon Coast National Wildlife Refuge Complex, potentially including parts of Washington.