Stephen Conklin
← Research
Open sourceFor G. Burch Fisher, Ph.D. (GCE-SCIPE, UMCES), 2026

NAIP Harvest M2M

Bulk NAIP aerial imagery download through the USGS Machine-to-Machine API, with parallel transfers, resume and band extraction.

View on GitHub
Map of the nine NAIP tiles, labeled by tile ID, that NAIP Harvest M2M found and downloaded for the Dolly Sods Wilderness area of interest in West Virginia (orange)
The 9 NAIP tiles (dashed, labeled by tile ID) that a test run found for the Dolly Sods Wilderness area of interest in West Virginia (orange): 2020 imagery at 60 cm.

The National Agriculture Imagery Program provides 60 cm–1 m four-band aerial imagery of the continental U.S. Downloading it in bulk for a study area through the USGS EarthExplorer interface is slow and manual. This pipeline does it from the command line.

Features

  • AOI-driven: pass a GeoJSON or Shapefile boundary and one or more date ranges.
  • Size estimate first: reports the scene count and total size, then asks before transferring anything.
  • Fast: multi-connection, concurrent downloads with aria2c.
  • Checkpoint and resume: interrupted runs pick up where they left off.
  • Band extraction: optional GDAL extraction of RGB, NIR or color-infrared subsets.
  • Uses the current token-based M2M authentication (the password login was retired in 2025), with a YAML config whose settings can all be overridden on the command line.

How it runs

One YAML file configures a run; the pipeline finds the scenes, stages them with USGS and reports the download size before anything is transferred, and the results open straight into a GIS.

The example configuration file open in VS Code, split into two panes
ConfigureCredentials, area of interest, date ranges, resolution, band extraction, parallel downloads, resume and logging. Every setting can also be overridden on the command line.
Terminal output of a NAIP Harvest M2M run ending with a download summary of 9 scenes, an estimated size and a proceed prompt
Run: Dolly Sods Wilderness, West VirginiaLoads and reprojects the area of interest, signs in to USGS M2M, finds 9 NAIP scenes for 2020, retrieves their download links and estimates the download size, then asks before downloading.
QGIS with the nine downloaded NAIP scenes and their RGB and near-infrared versions in the Layers panel, the imagery and Dolly Sods Wilderness outline on the map, and band settings in the Layer Styling panel
Use: open the results in GISThe downloads open straight into QGIS: each scene as a 4-band image plus its extracted RGB and near-infrared versions, over the Dolly Sods Wilderness area of interest.

Beyond visible light

NAIP records near-infrared as well as color, and the pipeline can extract true-color, near-infrared and color-infrared versions of each scene. The same 2.4 km patch of the Dolly Sods Wilderness, two ways.

True-color NAIP image of forest, open heath barrens and a winding stream in the Dolly Sods Wilderness
True colorRed, green and blue, as the eye sees it.
The same area in color-infrared: forest in deep red, open heath in pale cyan, the stream dark
Color-infraredNear-infrared shown as red: healthy vegetation glows red, while open heath and bare ground turn pale.

Detail at 60 cm

Each NAIP pixel is 60 cm across, enough to pick out individual trees, a meandering stream and faint trails.

Close-up NAIP image of a meandering stream through open heath with scattered trees and trails
Close-up, about 1:1,600A stream meandering through open heath and scattered trees, about 850 m across.

Maps

NAIP 2020 aerial imagery mosaic covering the Dolly Sods Wilderness area of interest in West Virginia, outlined in orange, over an OpenStreetMap basemap
NAIP coverage: Dolly Sods Wilderness, West VirginiaThe 2020 NAIP imagery (60 cm) downloaded for the Dolly Sods Wilderness area of interest (orange), shown in QGIS. At the left edge the tiles end and the basemap shows through.
Map of nine NAIP tile footprints in a three-by-three grid with tile IDs, over imagery and a basemap, with the Dolly Sods Wilderness boundary in orange
Nine scenes, one area of interestThe 9 NAIP quarter-quad tiles the run found (dashed, labeled by tile ID) covering the Dolly Sods Wilderness area of interest (orange).