Greetings Tweets --

For those of who do a lot of coastal birding in Washington, and want
to have access to aerial photography for habitat analysis or to just
satisfy curiosity...the Dept of Ecology, Shorelands Program's Digital
Coastal Atlas has gone public.

The Digital Coastal Atlas replaces, in part, the old 1970s Coastal
Zone Atlas of Washington, but provides expanded coverage of the
Pacific Ocean coast, as well as new features such as --

Aerial vertical photography: 1940s coverage of selected areas, and
1991-97 coverage of all of western Washington.

Coastal aerial oblique photos from Ecology's 1976-77, 1992-97, and
2000-02 photo series.

Mapping of wetlands, beach drift cells, and other items, and back
ground imagery such as nautical charts, USGS topo maps, plus historic
estuary mapping.

Just go to

http://www.ecy.wa.gov/programs/sea/SMA/atlas_home.html

and follow the instructions. This is a large and complex site, so be
patient even if you have a high speed connection. Also, because of the
GIS mapping functions, the site is fully functional only with MS
Internet Explorer V 5.0 or higher. Some features will not work
properly with Netscape, Opera, or Mozilla browsers, even the current
versions. The site has not been tested with Macintosh browsers.

If you're new to Internet mapping, take a minute to look over the tips
on the welcome page.

(Ecology's 1992-97 coastal aerial oblique photos remain available on
the faster Shoreline Aerial Photos web site at
http://apps.ecy.wa.gov/shorephotos/)


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Douglas Canning
Olympia, Washington
dcanning at nisquallyestuary.org
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