Determining what assets of a community are historical and culturally important to the residents in a community can be difficult to document, but the remote sensing technique known as a change detection analysis can help communities systematically document change over time for preservation purposes. Data was collected from the following sources: historical maps and aerial imagery from Auburn University Facilities Management; high resolution images from USDA’s National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP) provided by the USGS Earth Explorer database produced by the USGS; historic photos from Auburn University Library Archives; and aerial images from the University of Alabama Department of Geography in order to understand how Auburn University has changed spatially since 1980. An object based analysis was the technique used to identify the change on the Auburn University campus because it shows the change over time in detail. Identifying the areas of Auburn University that have changed can showcase the physical change of Auburn University in a systematic manner that documents the growth patterns of Auburn University for historical preservation purposes. These findings can give historians, alumni, and university officials the ability to preserve Auburn University’s past, as well as a model to continue documenting the change of Auburn University main campus for future generations. My findings suggest that Auburn University has undergone a period of growth in the last 40 years, which has left its mark on the physical layout of the main campus. The lack of documentation about Auburn University’s growth is due to the randomness of campus wide maps over the last 40 years, which puts historical preservation at a campus wide level at risk. This paper examines aerial imagery and historical map as a way to showcase growth trends at Auburn University from 1980 to 2017 using object-based classification in order to systematically document growth patterns as a way to promote historical preservation of Auburn University for future generations.
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