SA's ‘citizen scientists’ capture our changing landscape
South African researchers are hoping to enlist an army of “citizen scientists” armed with cameras to understand environmental change around the country. More than 20,000 historical landscape photographs have been digitised by the University of Cape Town‚ which is encouraging photographers to retake the same image decades later‚ compare the two images and record the major changes.Changes that can be observed‚ and interpreted‚ include the rate of alien vegetation invasions‚ bush encroachment and biome shifts‚ changing stocking rates and land-use practices‚ the effects of post-fire vegetation recovery‚ growth rates and long-term survival of key threatened plant species.“The Havelock Road climbing the mountain” near Barberton was taken by John Acocks in 1946. The repeat photograph was taken 69 years later in 2015 by Nico and Delia Oosthuizen. It shows bush encroachment in the mountain valleys and an expanding human settlement on the plains below.The project‚ using a process known as “repeat photography”‚ is being run by the university’s Plant Conservation Unit (PCU) and the Animal Demography Unit (ADU).“This effort made by our team is important‚ but we still have a long way to go if we want to understand these changes better‚” said Samantha Venter‚ project coordinator of rePhotoSA. “Citizen scientists could make an important contribution to this research because they can reach vast areas of southern Africa that our team may never get to. The combined effort means that more historical images can be repeated to understand these changes more efficiently‚” she said.The project sends citizen scientists on “epic adventures” to find and repeat the historical landscape photographs across a particular region. At the moment‚ 5133 historical photographs have been uploaded to the rePhotoSA website‚ and more the being added as collections are processed.Since the project started‚ 51 repeat photographs have been uploaded to the site by 14 active repeat photographers and the number is growing‚ said Venter.“With each repeat‚ we take one step forward towards understanding how and why the vegetation of southern Africa has changed or is changing‚” added Venter.“In addition‚ we hope to use the information gained from this project to better understand changes in animal distributions.” TMG Digital..
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