About This Project

Ask the Scientists

What is the context of this research?

I've been working in Southeast Asia since 1987, primarily in Indonesia and far southwestern China. I've seen beautiful forests converted into oil palm plantations. I've watched forests be selectively logged of their most majestic trees. We have all seen changes happening in the world around us but as time passes, we forget what the world looked like, we lose track of how much things have changed, of what we have lost or gained.

This project would created a standardized approach to monitor this change, simply by allowing passersby to snap a quick photo of the landscape in a standardized way and share it with the server. The contributed photos will be incorporated into a time-lapse video.

This approach could be thought of as "crowd-streaming", where we stitch crowd-sourced photos of the exact same scene at different moments in time into a virtual stream or video.

What is the significance of this project?

This project could affect everyone's awareness of environmental change. Together, citizens can monitor the slow evolution of landscapes around the world. Scientists can use the streams to determine the timing of ecological behavior, like flowering in the spring or leaf drop in the fall. Land managers can gain a better understanding of the recovery of landscapes after natural disaster. Changes in species composition and structure could be determined on a broad spatial scale.

These sites can be placed anywhere: in high-traffic urban areas, like parks, along rivers and waterways; in low-traffic areas, like hiking trails through national parks and forests. In the end, only a few photos would be needed to provide adequate documentation for many environmental processes and changes. Only rarely would a daily series be required. Instead, weekly or even monthly shots would be sufficient and extremely useful.

What are the goals of the project?

First order goals

• Create a low-tech and durable physical platforms that standardize the view and orientation so that the photos can be easily stitched together (see lab notes for design ideas - comments welcome!).
• Develop server software that can handle images from many different cameras and phones and stitch them together into movie.
• Share these movies at www.signsofchange.org. Each site will have its own movie and web address.
• Share the technique and software so anyone can create a Signs of Change site anywhere.

• Develop an app that notifies the user that a Signs of Change site is nearby, provides the user with the view of the environment they should be capturing, and automatically harvests the image off their device.
• Produce lots of Signs of Change platforms to distribute to lucky (and randomly chosen) donors so that they can do this for their favorite part of the world.