Every NAIP year over your area, side by side, ready to download.

What NAIP is

USDA aerial photography of the lower 48, flown in the growing season

The National Agriculture Imagery Program is aerial imagery the U.S. Department of Agriculture acquires over the conterminous United States during the agricultural growing season — “leaf-on” conditions. It began as a Farm Service Agency program and is now administered by USDA’s Farm Production and Conservation Business Center (FPAC-BC) in Salt Lake City. The imagery is orthorectified, so it lines up like a map, and it is public domain.

• Four 8-bit bands: 1 Red, 2 Green, 3 Blue, 4 Near-infrared. Natural color is bands 1-2-3; color infrared is 4-1-2, where healthy vegetation shows bright red. The near-infrared band is what makes NDVI possible.
• Each state is flown on its own cycle, usually every two to three years (no longer than three), so the years differ by state — Colorado, for example, is flown in odd years, so there is no 2014 over Denver.
• Sharper over time: 1 m pixels in most states until about 2016–2017, 0.6 m as the standard since 2018, and 0.3 m in some newer flights (Denver 2023, for example).
• Delivered as quarter-quad tiles — 3.75 by 3.75 minutes plus a 300 m buffer, roughly 7 by 7 km.

Watch it work

Watch the walkthrough

Search an address, see every NAIP year that covers it, swipe two years to spot what changed, download the 4-band GeoTIFF — plus the Imagery, Showcase and Help tabs.

How it works

Search an area, see the years, compare two, download

1. Search an area. Type a US place or address, then use the current view or draw a rectangle and press Search this area.
2. See the years available. You get one row per NAIP year that really exists there, newest first, with its pixel size, flight dates, tile count and total size. You never type a year.
3. Pick one and show it. Show draws that year on the map in natural color, color infrared or NDVI.
4. Swipe A | B. Set A on one year and Set B on another: Swipe puts A on the left and B on the right of a handle, or Flip between them with the [ and ] keys.
5. Download. Tick the years you want: full-resolution quarter-quad tiles as Cloud-Optimized GeoTIFFs, a clip of just your area, every signed link at once for a download manager, or the tile’s page at USGS EarthExplorer.

On the USGS analysis layer you can also read the four band values of any pixel, run live NDVI, NDWI and NIR/Red indices with a threshold slider in the browser, outline the tile grid and lock the view to one tile. The address bar always holds the current view, years and rendering, so a link shares exactly what you see.

Where the data comes from

Two public sources, both open

• USGS The National Map NAIP image service — one year per state, the most recent USGS has mirrored (Colorado 2019, California 2022, Arizona 2023, for example). The app uses it as the analysis layer: pixel values, live indices, tile footprints and lock-to-tile.
• Microsoft Planetary Computer NAIP — every NAIP year from 2010 to 2023 as Cloud-Optimized GeoTIFFs, searched through its STAC collection. It supplies the year list, the map tiles for each year and every download.

NAIP is USDA imagery; background on the program is on the USGS EROS NAIP page and the USDA FPAC-BC NAIP coverage map. Imagery credit: USDA FPAC Business Center – NAIP; USGS The National Map; Microsoft Planetary Computer.

All Things Spatial is not affiliated with or endorsed by USDA, USGS or Microsoft. Confirm currency, accuracy and fitness for purpose with the source programs before relying on any image or index for operational, regulatory or financial decisions.

Showcase

Five places where the change is plain to see

The Showcase tab opens each pair as a year swipe — the earlier year on the left, the later one on the right.

• Marshall Fire — Louisville & Superior, CO 2021 → 2023. August 2021, four months before the December 30 fire, against September 2023: burned lots rebuilding by Harper Lake.
• Camp Fire — Paradise, CA 2016 → 2022. The November 2018 fire stripped the tree canopy and most homes from Paradise.
• Tesla Giga Texas — Del Valle, TX 2018 → 2022. Gravel pits and scrub in 2018; by 2022, the factory, one of the largest buildings in the world.
• The Villages, FL 2010 → 2023. Pasture and woodland become streets of new homes as The Villages spreads south.
• Lake Mead — Boulder Beach, NV 2010 → 2022. The shoreline retreats and the marina moves out after it. (Nevada has no 2023 NAIP, so 2022 is the nearest year.)

FAQ

Common questions

Who owns the imagery?

NAIP is public domain. The files come straight from Microsoft Planetary Computer, and the app opens straight to the map.

How current is it?

2010 through 2023 — the years Planetary Computer holds. No 2024 or newer NAIP is available from open public sources yet; Esri’s Living Atlas carries newer years behind an ArcGIS sign-in, so the app does not use it.

Why isn’t my newest year in the analysis layer?

The USGS The National Map service holds one year per state — the most recent USGS has mirrored — so it can trail the newest flight: Colorado is 2019 there, while Planetary Computer also has 2021 and 2023. The line under the results says which year is newest and which year the analysis uses. Every year can still be shown, compared and downloaded from Planetary Computer; only pixel values and the live indices are tied to the USGS year.

How big are the downloads?

A full-resolution quarter-quad tile runs from hundreds of megabytes to about 2 GB, and a 0.3 m tile holds about eleven times the pixels of a 1 m tile. A clip of just your area is cut at native resolution up to 4000 px a side (scaled down past that, and the app says so), and its size is shown before you click — a box of roughly 430 by 445 m at 0.3 m is about 11 MB. Files are 4-band, 8-bit GeoTIFFs that open in ArcGIS Pro or QGIS (bands 1-2-3 for natural color, 4-1-2 for color infrared). Signed tile links expire within about an hour; the app re-signs them.