Dairy Bush GigaPan - 56 - Sept 22 2010 by Alex Smith

Dairy Bush GigaPan - 56 - Sept 22 2010

Year 2 - Week 4 - 360 ̊

The urban environment is expanding at a never before seen rate. Existing natural environments within urban centres, such as forests or woodlots, are exposed to increasing anthropogenic pressures of degradation, fragmentation, biological invasion and destruction. One key to our capacity to understanding these changes will be ongoing monitoring through time. If such monitoring is democratized and publicly available then one may assume that a marginalized environment may become more valued by the human population. On the University of Guelph campus in Ontario, Canada, the “Dairy Bush” is an 8.5 ha woodlot that has been part of the city and the university campus since 1830. The sign outside the Bush reads, "The Dairy Bush is a unique and delicate example of Great Lakes St. Lawrence forest in Southern Ontario, and serves as an outdoor laboratory for University of Guelph students." Since August 2009 I have been visiting the Dairy Bush weekly to document time in this urban woodlot using GigaPan panoramic images.

This is week 56. Warmer - and raining today. 18 ̊ C while taking this panorama. Many insects observed while shooting - caterpillars on a maple, lots of mosquitoes around, and many, many snails! How many can you find?

Check out the panorama with Google Earth's browser plugin: bit.ly/aECCfz 
This is one of the GigaPans that were pictured in Science (Frenkel KA 2010 Panning for Science. Science 330:748-749.) to accompany an article by Karen A. Frenkel about GigaPan: www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/330/6005/748 
Last week's GigaPan at: www.gigapan.org/gigapans/59246/
Next week's GigaPan at: www.gigapan.org/gigapans/60561/
The low-resolution time lapse video of the first year of the Dairy Bush GigaPan to YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=uImvGH1dq-o