What a pleasure to find out that Esri permits mappers to access their collection of past imageries known as World Imagery Wayback.

Map it like the early noughties!

Why older imageries can be useful, some might argue.

It was already stated in the diary post that “The older imagery may include the features you are editing with better clarity or relative accuracy.”

Indeed. So, this was proven during one of my edits made today.

Other mappers might consider me as a waterway mapper junkie. Yeah, I’m so very into it, when the right mood comes.

Straight into today’s anecdote: a KartaView picture suggests there is a nearby waterway.

The freshest Maxar imagery indicated so too. With a caveat.

The path of said stream sneaks from the south east to the north west. Around the oil palms next to a Chinese burial ground, however, it is unclear how and where it connects to the nearby river.

This is probably one of the many cases where Esri Wayback Imagery comes to the rescue! Problem is solved.

However, since waterways are a dynamic geographical feature, so some critical reasoning should be included as well. But personally, this is perfectly A-OK (in this specific case).

Well, at least Esri World Imagery Wayback allows me to access the (only?) greyscale imagery from the early 2010s (was available on Mapbox Satellite before the gradual bit by bit imagery refresh). Which I find it very useful to detect possible waterways.