Addressing environmental change due to climate change and changes in the structure of ecosystems is one of the biggest challenges for both science and policy. Studies of long-term observations, models, and the compilation of empirical measurements that create large databases are becoming the most important tools for mapping the processes that cause future changes in the environment. The essence of Naturalapse is to take advantage of the big data value based on photography.
There was a lot of rain in the spring of 2015, the bog in the botanical garden was under water, the landscape illustrated its ancient condition;
Climate change is no longer just about the scientific community; megapixels and storage capacity began to explode;
These circumstances inspired the pro bono attempt of MATE (Hungarian University of Agriculture and Life Sciences), the Beyer Creative and the Broadband Foundation to incorporate a regular landscape photo of the installed scaffold into the protocol of the research site.
A database that can be interpreted by 2022 has been compiled, which is not yet a relevant time period for climate change, but new knowledge can already be extracted from it and it has been confirmed that sampling can be maintained with acceptable accuracy in the long run.
As a result of the experiment, the naturalapse was created, a website on which the material from Soroksár can be browsed and new projects can be started.
Our goal is to turn the interface into a platform-like photo sharing application. Shows of images should not only be taken from an individually installed stand, but also from community stands in public locations identified and registered by geographic location or a QR code. The photos are then automatically transferred to a machine-learning post-processing system that ensures that a database can be created from them.
Making it community-based and interactive can help organize people locally around a landscape, by spreading it, allowing comparisons between regions and thus, communities in certain regions to collaborate. In view of its long-term goal, the extensive use of Naturalapse can become a kind of visual demonstration for a large part of society, the theme of which is the constant change of the natural environment and thus the promotion of environmental and climate awareness in the information society.
1. Botanical Garden of Soroksár
Project presentation.
The Soroksár Botanical Garden is located in the 23rd district of the Hungarian capital, Budapest. Less than 20 km from the heart of the bustling city, at the edge of the Southern Pest Plain in Péteri major, Soroksár, the garden occupies a territory of 60 hectares. The settlement was recorded as early as the 13th century but the name "Surcusar" is still unclear, as to whether it was a settlement name or refers to the Danube branch and the surrounding swampy steppe. However, strong evidences support that people lived in the this area even 4,000 years ago. During the construction of the rock garden, finds from the early Bronze Age were uncovered: bones, pottery remains, and even an intact skeleton of a young man.
The special feature of the garden, which preserves more than 1,600 indigenous and exotic plant taxa, is that it includes mosaics of natural and reconstructed habitats of the Pannonian forest steppe vegetation; the natural drying fen meadow typical for the region between the Danube and the Tisza, the original sand dune, the lake with the swamp and the pedunculate oak forest. In these undisturbed habitats, tens of thousands of individuals of protected plant species grow and many fungal species breed, while birds, reptiles, amphibians and many rare insect species have also found their refuge. The continental climate of the Garden is characterized by hectic rainfall distribution, extreme temperatures, hot dry summers and harsh frosts caused by the cold winds duriing the winter. Despite the extremes, long-term observations show that habitats are extremely self-sustaining and have enormous resilience. However, the effects of the ongoing climate change and the oppressive effects of the big city are predicting today the onset of unfavorable processes. Changes in the dynamics of the species that make up the vegetation in the Garden and the monitoring of the biodiversity of the habitats provide important information on the survival and conservation of the Pannonian forest steppe vegetation.
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Camera unit
Camera: Canon 550 D
Lenses: Canon EF-S 24mm f/2.8 STM (35mm)
F number: 8
Exposure: A
ISO: 100
Size: 5184 × 3456 p
