Why does the AGOL imagery base map have different years of imagery at different extents?

Question

If you zoom out to state level, one sees, I am assuming, the latest year of imagery. As soon as you zoom in, the imagery reverts to the older version until, I'm guessing like 1:24,000 when the imagery changes back to the newest data. Finally,the imagery then changes again to the older imagery at the lowest zoom level. Why? It's quite noticeable since the newest is leaf-on and the older is leaf-off and the two are different qualities. What is going on?

Sincerely,

Confused and Agitated

Cody Benkelman · Answer

Richard

If you want to know for sure the date & source of imagery in the default basemap, you can query this feature class overlay https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=c03a526d94704bfb839445e80de95495

Also, if it's important to you to exert more control over exactly what you see, the Wayback service allows you to choose.  Using World Imagery Wayback

Thanks to Peter for his original response.

Cody B

Anonymous User · Answer

Hi Richard,

I think part of the reason for this is that the basemap combines multiple imagery sources to provide the highest resolution imagery possible for each location. There is a good description of how it is put together on the basemap's item details page: https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=10df2279f9684e4a9f6a7f08febac2a9.

Adding this to the ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World‌ & Imagery and Remote Sensing‌ channels as well.

Hope this helps,

-Peter