[Monica Peters]

Hi Sam/all

I really, really, really like the democratic approach to data collection. I am writing from New Zealand where our Department of Conservation (affectionately known as DOC), has recently undergone further major restructuring. It's the usual unhappy marriage of less resources and more work by a government that feels the environment has taken precedence over economic interests. The aim and necessity for DOC, charged with looking after about a third of the country's landmass, is for greater input on the ground by community groups and businesses. How outcomes of increased on ground works by community groups will be measured is currently unclear but in my opinion there could, and should be a place for photopoints. As for the groups themselves, those that do carry out some form of monitoring often focus on outputs only; for example, predator control (fairly common given our unique, slightly naive native fauna), is rarely measured against gains in native biodiversity. Another good case for photopoints. 

While photopoints are cheap to set up and take, there are big technical questions around how and where to house the data, as well how the data are used, and who by. There have been numerous projects here to create national-level one-size-fits-all databases but the reality is that we are left with different systems in different parts of the country. It would seem logical that a national agency such as DOC house this type of data. While DOC settles into its new structure, rest assured I'll be raising a few questions with DOC staff around monitoring and community groups (given that's the topic of my PhD) and promoting photopoints as a cheap way of collecting very useful data. I'm sure they'll love the 'cheap' part.

Regards,
Monica      

--
PhD Candidate

Faculty of Science and Engineering

University of Waikato     

HAMILTON, NEW ZEALAND 

Blog: www.monicalogues.com

Mob: 021 049 2036

Skype: monica.a.peters

[Shelby Gull Laird]

Monica,

I want to get in touch with you about your PhD research. 

->shelby

[Xiao, Xiangming]

Hi, all, 

We are hosting this Global Geo-Referenced Field Photo Library (http://www.eomf.ou.edu/photos), which is a community remote sensing and citizen science data portal for people to share, visualize and archive geo-referenced field photos that document landscape, land use and land cover change. All field photos are linked with time series MODIS data since 2000. 

You may try to use it and contribute some field photos to the field photo library. It will help us to convince other governmental agencies to establish their own data archives and treat field photos as useful ground data. Our research community have collect a large amount of field photos, but few are shared. 

Field photos in the library are used to support land cover mapping. 

Best regards, 

Xiangming 

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Xiangming Xiao, Ph.D. （肖向明）

Professor, Department of Microbiology and Plant Biology

Adjunct Professor, Department of Biology

Associate Director, Center for Spatial Analysis

Director, Earth Observation and Modeling Facility

University of Oklahoma

Room 2107, Stephenson Research and Technology Center

101 David L. Boren Blvd

Norman, OK 73019, USA

Telephone: 405-325-8941 (office); Cellphone: (603)-560-5648; Google Voice: (405) 928-8560

Email: xiangmi...@ou.edu; Web: http://www.eomf.ou.edu

Subject-Matter Editor, Ecological Applications

Review Editor, EcoHealth

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An open source community for collaborative development of change monitoring systems, tools and applications. People can do this right now using existing materials at single sites or they can organize networks of camera stations at scales of parks, cities, watersheds, counties, states, countries, or the world.
 
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