Field Verification of Land Use/Land Cover Change for Soil Erosion Analysis through ArcPad, GPS, Integrated High Resolution Digital Photos, and Public Web Interface.

Field verification through ESRI ArcPad and similar data collection software typically involves linking GPS coordinates and text-based attributes to points, polylines, and polygons. ArcPad 8.0 currently only supports linking digital photos to shapefile features if captured through the device's integrated camera or webcam. We implemented a simple method for linking photos from a high-resolution digital SLR camera through Microsoft's Windows Image Acquisition (WIA) application programming interface and custom scripting in ArcPad. Photos are geotagged with either GPS coordinates or map pointer coordinates and hyperlinked to each shapefile feature in ArcPad and ArcGIS supplementing text based attributes with a descriptive photo. This greatly enhances GIS information for field verification of land cover/land use change for soil erosion and stream sedimentation verification, and provides a basis for a new public web interface for further identification of problem sites.