{"id":23262,"date":"2025-03-05T09:00:10","date_gmt":"2025-03-05T10:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=23262"},"modified":"2025-03-05T10:27:31","modified_gmt":"2025-03-05T10:27:31","slug":"150-years-of-change-how-old-photos-recaptured-reveal-a-shifting-climate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=23262","title":{"rendered":"150 Years of Change: How Old Photos, Recaptured, Reveal a Shifting Climate"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the heart of Utah\u2019s Uinta Mountains, a team of scientists is re-creating historical pictures to study how much, and how quickly, ecosystems are changing.<\/p>\n

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For 30 miles we bounce along a dirt road in southwestern Wyoming, heading toward a jagged skyline. It\u2019s early September and the aspens are starting to turn yellow. As we climb toward the mountains, the air grows colder. Soon the road will see snowfall.<\/p>\n

Jeff Munroe, a professor of geology at Middlebury College in Vermont, is taking us back in time. Our small group of scientists and adventurers will be backpacking into the Uinta Mountains to recreate a series of photographs made in 1870 by William Henry Jackson, a photographer who worked for the United States Geological Survey<\/a> under the direction of the geologist Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden. Jackson and Hayden documented the landscape and natural resources of the Wyoming Territory in support of U.S. expansion. We\u2019re going to see exactly how the environment has changed.<\/p>\n

Re-photography \u2014 capturing the same scene from the same location after a span of time \u2014 enables scientists to track long-term changes such as alpine tree-line rise, shoreline erosion and glacial retreat, which are difficult to study otherwise. The technique can be more challenging than it sounds. Finding the general location is the first hurdle, as place names change over time and descriptions are separated from historical images. Next, researchers must identify the precise coordinates of the original tripod placement, which can be especially vexing in landscapes prone to rockslides or erosion. Subtle variations in photographic equipment can also make it hard to create matching images as cameras, films and lens sizes change.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In our case, the difficult terrain, which was now coupled with unsettled weather, meant that we might not even be able to reach the general area, let alone find half a dozen tripod locations. And although some re-photography projects rely on drones to scout their locations, we\u2019ll be doing all our work on foot, as Jackson had.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The head of Blacks Fork, a 175-mile-long tributary of the Green River, overlaid with images from 2001 and 2024.<\/span>William Henry Jackson (1870); Jeff Munroe (2001); Joanna Corimanya, Anah\u00ed Quezada and Townsend Peterson (2024)<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Jeff first rephotographed these Uinta sites in 2001. What he saw then would have been unimaginable in the 19th century. Elements of the landscape that Hayden described as everlasting, from the \u201cperpetual snows\u201d to the \u201cupper limit\u201d of the tree line, were changing. Over the intervening 131 years, the climate had warmed. Ecological changes were plainly visible in Jeff\u2019s new photographs. Trees had filled in the open meadows and ascended the mountain slopes. Lower-altitude species had established themselves higher up. All this change was squeezing the unique high alpine areas and the species that have adapted to them. Soon they would have nowhere left to go.<\/p>\n

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In the heart of Utah\u2019s Uinta Mountains, a team of scientists is re-creating historical pictures to study how much, and how quickly, ecosystems are changing.For 30 miles we bounce along a dirt road in southwestern Wyoming, heading toward a jagged skyline. It\u2019s early September and the aspens are starting to turn yellow. As we climb toward the mountains, the air grows colder. Soon the road will see snowfall.Jeff Munroe, a professor of geology at Middlebury College in Vermont, is taking us back in time. Our small group of scientists and adventurers will be backpacking into the Uinta Mountains to recreate a series of photographs made in 1870 by William Henry Jackson, a photographer who worked for the United States Geological Survey under the direction of the geologist Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden. Jackson and Hayden documented the landscape and natural resources of the Wyoming Territory in support of U.S. expansion. We\u2019re going to see exactly how the environment has changed.Re-photography \u2014 capturing the same scene from the same location after a span of time \u2014 enables scientists to track long-term changes such as alpine tree-line rise, shoreline erosion and glacial retreat, which are difficult to study otherwise. The technique can be more challenging than it sounds. Finding the general location is the first hurdle, as place names change over time and descriptions are separated from historical images. Next, researchers must identify the precise coordinates of the original tripod placement, which can be especially vexing in landscapes prone to rockslides or erosion. Subtle variations in photographic equipment can also make it hard to create matching images as cameras, films and lens sizes change.In our case, the difficult terrain, which was now coupled with unsettled weather, meant that we might not even be able to reach the general area, let alone find half a dozen tripod locations. And although some re-photography projects rely on drones to scout their locations, we\u2019ll be doing all our work on foot, as Jackson had.The head of Blacks Fork, a 175-mile-long tributary of the Green River, overlaid with images from 2001 and 2024.William Henry Jackson (1870); Jeff Munroe (2001); Joanna Corimanya, Anah\u00ed Quezada and Townsend Peterson (2024)Jeff first rephotographed these Uinta sites in 2001. What he saw then would have been unimaginable in the 19th century. Elements of the landscape that Hayden described as everlasting, from the \u201cperpetual snows\u201d to the \u201cupper limit\u201d of the tree line, were changing. Over the intervening 131 years, the climate had warmed. Ecological changes were plainly visible in Jeff\u2019s new photographs. Trees had filled in the open meadows and ascended the mountain slopes. Lower-altitude species had established themselves higher up. All this change was squeezing the unique high alpine areas and the species that have adapted to them. Soon they would have nowhere left to go.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23264,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23262"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23262\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23265,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23262\/revisions\/23265"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}