Historical landscape photographs have been matched with modern images and used to analyse changes in alpine glaciers, hydrology and soil erosion, and vegetation, including changes in the populations of long-lived desert succulents and savanna trees. <\/p>\n
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Read more: Eyes in the sky and on the ground are helping forest conservation in Cameroon<\/a> <\/strong> <\/em>\n<\/p>\n Repeat photography is increasingly being seen as an important tool for monitoring the impact of climate change on vulnerable species and threatened ecosystems. <\/p>\n Our work in southern Africa has produced more than 2,000 repeat photographs from all the major biomes<\/a> in the region. In a recent synthesis<\/a> of this work we provided a practical assessment of the impact of long-term climate and land use change for the African sub-continent. Contrary to expectations, we found that vegetation cover and biomass had increased at most locations in response to changes in land use, climate and CO\u2082. <\/p>\n Amassing such a large number of repeat photographs was the cumulative result of multiple research projects by many researchers over many years. Gaining a more holistic overview of the changes evident in southern Africa\u2019s landscapes through repeat photography would require tremendous funding for travel, and of course, an amount of time that we do not have. That\u2019s where citizen science comes in.<\/p>\n The rePhotoSA project<\/a> was launched in August 2015. The idea is to involve interested members of the public in re-photographing historical locations. This has two benefits. First, participants add to the number of repeated images. Second, public awareness of landscape change is raised.<\/p>\n The project website<\/a> has over 6,000 historical images from ten primary photographic collections of southern African landscapes, dating from the late 1800s to the early 2000s. The geographic spread of the photographs is influenced largely by the interests of the original photographers. Often these photographs are donated to the project by family members, or institutions to which the original photographers belonged \u2013 and sometimes by the photographers themselves. <\/p>\n On the website, photographs are spatially referenced into a grid of quarter-degree squares (QDS; each approximately 28 x 25 km in size) to narrow down the possible locations of the historical photo sites. Users can browse photographs from the colour-coded QDSes and download a high-resolution copy for printing, as well as a field data sheet in which metadata can be recorded. After repeating the photo, users must register with the project to upload their repeats to the website. We also have active Instagram<\/a> and Facebook<\/a> pages. <\/p>\n Between 2015 and 2020, more than 280 landscape photographs were repeated and uploaded by citizen scientists, mostly from around South Africa\u2019s Cape Peninsula and the country\u2019s eastern Karoo region. <\/p>\n Unsurprisingly, there is a higher density of repeats nearer to city centres. Some of the changes observed in these areas include increased urbanisation and infrastructure such as power transmission lines, as well as the introduction or clearing of alien vegetation. <\/p>\n Read more: Tracking science: a way to include more people in producing knowledge<\/a> <\/strong> <\/em>\n<\/p>\n In more rural locations where urban expansion is less visible, we often see other ecologically interesting trends: increased woody vegetation cover \u2013 bush encroachment \u2013 and denudation of large areas as a result of fire or overgrazing. <\/p>\n There are some limitations on the consistency in the quality of data obtainable through citizen science projects. For instance, making inferences about the drivers of the changes observed partly depends on the quality of the repeat photograph and its associated metadata. But the benefits far outweigh the costs when the area from which data is required is so vast. <\/p>\n The project recently achieved an important milestone with the publication of a peer-reviewed article<\/a> in which its activities are described. Bringing a South African repeat photography project into the international research arena and emphasising the value of citizen science and open data are both significant contributions. <\/p>\n The project has also been cited<\/a> in various research articles<\/a> as an example of how photographs can illustrate vegetation change, suggesting its utility as a crowd-sourced, long-term monitoring project. As more photographic collections are curated and integrated into the website, we anticipate that the combined efforts of our citizen scientists and research teams will further aid in understanding how southern Africa\u2019s landscapes are changing in response to human and climate pressures.<\/p>\n
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<\/div>Citizen science<\/h2>\n
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\nLong-term monitoring<\/h2>\n