Repeat Photography using GigaPan Imagery in the San Simon Watershed, Arizona, USA

Photographs are an important source of documentation supporting the management of western U.S. rangelands. High
resolution panoramic photography has the potential to vastly expand the value of photography in rangeland monitoring and
documentation. The immediate objective of this research is to test the GigaPan system for taking repeat photographs
supporting landscape change analyses. An initial test was conducted to relocate photo points in the San Simon Watershed in
Arizona where landscape photographs were taken in 1941. Coupled photo pairs from 1941 and 2010 are posted to the
GigaPan website where they can be annotated to incorporate both scientific interpretations and local knowledge. Work is
ongoing to quantify landscape and vegetation changes in the photographs. These changes will be interpreted in the context of
high seasonal and inter-annual variability identified in measured rainfall. Initial field work has successfully demonstrated the
use of GigaPan technology in landscape photography for documenting change