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Ground control point locations for Fern Ridge Lake, Oregon, during annual low pool, January and February, 2023

Metadata Updated: September 12, 2025

In cooperation with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) deployed ground control points and coordinated aerial photograph acquisition of Fern Ridge Lake, a multi-purpose reservoir in western Oregon impounded by the 13-m tall Fern Ridge Dam. Aerial photographs were acquired by the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) during winter 2023 when water levels were at or near typical annual “low pool” or minimum pool, a target elevation (108 m NGVD 29) for flood-control operations. Photographs were acquired at two different altitudes with a WaldoAir XCAM Ultra 50 camera mounted on a Cessna aircraft and captured the entire reservoir area as defined by full pool (or maximum conservation pool elevation), including major tributaries entering the reservoir such as the Long Tom River and Coyote Creek, upstream of Fern Ridge Dam. Dam operations at the 3,700-hectare Fern Ridge Lake, located 39 kilometers upstream of the confluence of the Long Tom River and the Willamette River, along with other hydrogeomorphic conditions, result in a diverse array of geomorphic processes and landforms within the reservoir. To document reservoir floor geomorphology, the USGS applied structure-from-motion (SfM) techniques to these aerial photographs, following the workflow outlined in Over and others (2021), and generated three-dimensional xyz point clouds, digital surface models (DSMs), and orthomosaics of Fern Ridge Lake at low pool. This data release includes ground control points, dataset footprints, original aerial photographs, processed point clouds, DSMs, and orthomosaics of Fern Ridge Lake with varying aerial extents and resolutions that were all developed from imagery acquired in January and February of 2023: (1) the January 30 model (FernRideLake_10cm) covered the entire reservoir area with an average point density of 7.47 points per square meter, DSM resolution of 36.6 centimeters per pixel, and orthomosaic ground resolution of 9.15 centimeters per pixel; (2) the January 31 model (FernRidgeLake_5cmLongTomRiver) covered the Long Tom River within the reservoir with an average point density of 25 points per square meter, DSM resolution of 20 centimeters per pixel, and orthomosaic ground resolution of 5 centimeters per pixel; (3) the combined February 2 and February 8 model (FernRidgeLake_5cmCoyoteCreek) covered Coyote Creek within the reservoir with an average point density of 36.3 points per square meter, DSM resolution of 16.6 centimeters per pixel, and orthomosaic ground resolution of 4.15 centimeters per pixel. All DSMs and orthomosaics are formatted as Cloud Optimized GeoTIFFs (COGs) for enhanced web visualization (GDAL 2024). This documentation describes a CSV file containing ground control point locations collected on January 17 and January 18, 2023, that were used to spatially register SfM datasets of Fern Ridge Lake, Oregon.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

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Dates

Metadata Created Date September 12, 2025
Metadata Updated Date September 12, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from DOI USGS DCAT-US

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date September 12, 2025
Metadata Updated Date September 12, 2025
Publisher U.S. Geological Survey
Maintainer
Identifier http://datainventory.doi.gov/id/dataset/usgs-65944a00d34e3265ab14f757
Data Last Modified 2025-03-11T00:00:00Z
Category geospatial
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 010:12
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Metadata Catalog ID https://ddi.doi.gov/usgs-data.json
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id 950708ba-3abe-4728-8ff7-3edc6b771cb1
Harvest Source Id 2b80d118-ab3a-48ba-bd93-996bbacefac2
Harvest Source Title DOI USGS DCAT-US
Metadata Type geospatial
Old Spatial -123.36270, 44.04150, -123.24320, 44.12480
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 8f6891ade58d2ddf1a939d337a32dcf7d4132df3e4e1e8b138cabcc84b08dcc6
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial {"type": "Polygon", "coordinates": -123.36270, 44.04150, -123.36270, 44.12480, -123.24320, 44.12480, -123.24320, 44.04150, -123.36270, 44.04150}

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