La Revista Digital 1 Versión Final Revista No. 2 - Prueva | Page 40

A. Byers
see Rounce et al., 2016), and its power and accuracy
improve with each passing year. Repeat photography
can nevertheless enhance the utility of remote sensing by
providing a number of complementary, qualitative, and in
some cases unique, attributes.
For example, oblique photography predates remote
sensing by at least 90 years, thus offering a more extended
window into the past, as well as providing useful high
resolution and oblique data and detail (Kull, 2005).
Photographs of glaciers throughout the world have been
taken since at least the late 1800s, e.g., the photographs by
the Italian photographer Victorio Sella of North American,
Ugandan, Karakorum, and Himalayan glaciers during the
climbing expeditions of the Duke of the Abruzzi in the
early 1900s (Aperture Foundation, 2000; Tenderini and
Shandrick, 1997).
Repeat and time lapse photography can also be used
as effective educational tools as well illustrating, even to
the untrained eye, if properly presented, the changes in
landscapes (cultural and physical), vegetation, glaciers,
glacial lakes, and polar ice that have taken place over the
past 100 years or more. Examples include the educational
videos and traveling displays of Glacier National Park by
the USGS (2017), the Himalayan-Hindu Kush exhibits of
GlacierWorks (2017), recent repeat photography exhibits
of the Mt. Everest region by the International Centre for
Integrated Mountain Development (Byers, 2007; ICIMOD,
2008; Figure 25), videos and exhibits of the Extreme Ice
Survey (Balog, 2014), and in films such as the UNDP’s
“Revealed: Himalayan Meltdown” (UNDP, 2010).
Figure 25. Display of the author’s Himalayan repeat
photography work at the 2008 IUCN Annual Meetings,
Barcelona, Spain, which toured an additional five European
cities. Smaller exhibits were displayed in the Everest basecamp
during the spring of 2008. Both were funded and hosted by the
International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development
(ICIMOD), Kathmandu, Nepal. Photo: A. Byers.
Repeat photography also encourages a level of
communication with local people rarely found in technical
field studies, since simply finding photopoints is almost
always facilitated by individual or group interviews, the
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sharing of older photographs, and discussions regarding
perceived change. Regular discussions with arrieros
(mule drivers), farmers, and trekking/climbing guides
were of immense help in locating the photopoints, and in
interpreting the changes in the historic photographs used in
this essay (Figure 26). On a more rigorous level, Garrard
et al. (2012) used repeat photography and participatory
research as tools for assessing changes in environmental
services in Sagarmatha (Mt. Everest) National Park, Nepal.
They argue that the method can complement existing
biophysical ecosystem assessments in mountain protected
areas because of its ability to integrate “…diverse
stakeholder’s knowledge, [recognize] power imbalances,
and [grapple] with complex social-ecological systems.”
Figure 26. Finding photopoint locations, and interpreting the
changes, was enhanced by sharing the historic photographs
with arrieros, local farmers, and trekking/climbing guides.
Photo: A. Byers.
Finally, repeat photography encourages a spirit of
exploration and discovery, as well as a merging of art,
photography and science. Retracing the footsteps of the
early climber-scientists who took the older photographs,
such as Erwin Schneider and Hans Kinzl in the Cordillera
Blanca, or Victoria Sella, Charles Houston, Charles Evans,
and Fritz Müller in the Hindu Kush-Himalaya, can range
from a pleasant hike through the high mountain landscape,
to an interesting rock scramble, to a semi-technical
rock or glacier climb that should only be attempted by
the experienced mountaineer. Reading changes in the
landscape and interpreting the changes that appear to have
occurred based upon oral testimony, ground truth sampling,
literature reviews and other methods, demand the use of a
range of skills from the physical, social and photographic
sciences. In an age where “citizen science” is becoming
more and more popular (Carey et al., 2016), repeat
photography can play important roles in our understanding
of change while encouraging the development of field-
based, interdisciplinary research approaches within the
next generation of high mountain scholars and field
practitioners.
Revista de Glaciares y Ecosistemas de Montaña 2 (2017): 31-40