This project takes advantage of new developments in photography and image analysis software to advance filed studies in environmental science. The dynamics of ecological processes as well as impacts from disturbance often are measured by changes in vegetation. Traditional methods of vegetation analysis are labor intensive, slow, and as a result, they often are confined to small-scale measurement. Many current research topics (i.e. climate change) require analysis over large areas, and although remote sensing from space is providing unprecedented information, validation of satellite imagery with large-scale vegetation analysis is lacking. A new, ground-based methodology has been developed by an interdisciplinary group at the University of New Mexico that is significantly increasing the ability of scientists to study environmental dynamics across a range of scales and allow integration with reflectance measurements from satellite instruments. The resulting system will provide a method of easily performing detailed analysis of near ground level images on a computer workstation.//
