Inexpensive aerial videography acquisition, analysis, and reproduction

We describe a relatively inexpensive and easy-to-use hardware/software system for use in aerial videography of wetlands and other habitats. Advantages of the camcorder we used over older models include its use of three charge-coupled device sensors, Hi-8 recording format, and fast shutter speeds. We classified several wetlands in the Sandhills of Nebraska and, for our purposes, the color video images were as good as scanned 35-mm aerial photographs taken at the same altitude. The mean ( plus or minus SE) of the percent difference in areas classified from video and scanned photographs for three observers was 1.54 plus or minus 0.16%. The commercial (Adobe Photoshop) and public domain (NIH Image) software we used are excellent and inexpensive for interactive image classification and quantification. A low cost ink-jet printer was used to reproduce video or photographic images suitable for ground-truthing or other uses.