How Best Aerial Photography altered the way environmental change was perceived?

Using aerial photography for assessing and mapping change in the landscapes is one crucial element of managing ecosystem. The photographs captured from above are ideal to map landscape features that are fine-scale including individual trees and riparian areas. Small ecosystems can also be assessed. Development of airplanes and photography from higher altitudes during the early phase of the twentieth century changed dramatically the ways landscapes use to be understood and were seen. For instance, a set of photos taken by helicopter indicated the eradication of boreal forests by massive strip of mining machines. However, soon after a debate emerged where the focus was laid on the fact, that if the pictures are true interpretations or representations. Some even thought that unfair juxtaposition portrayed mining operations in the bad light. Here are the alterations that were introduced by airplanes.

Realistic vantage
Historical analysis always played an important role mainly because the Best Aerial Photography helps in comparing the after and before changes in an area. As airplanes helped in moving surveyors and explorers in to the blue changes immediately happened. The first transformation was in the photographs where new depiction emerged called “aerial photograph”. Since the pictures were taken from a certain height people got world’s realistic vantage that was never seen before, all this time. These new images soon became a part of textbooks, magazines and government reports. This was valuable in terms of incorporating valuable methods of managing forests, mineral prospecting, farming and urban planning.

Map modifications
The Best Aerial Photography brought in considerable change in the department of maps. The vast interiors of a country or place seemed suddenly within reach. Everything could be reconnoitred through air crews in comparison to what took years on part of the teams on ground to accomplish. On ground surveying was indeed a laborious process that incorporated measuring distances and calculation of angles between points. These points would be plotted on maps. With the application of perspective laws same distances could be calculated efficiently and quickly. This change that mapping underwent came to be called photogrammetry, a practice for Earth measurement with the help of still images.

Survey depictions changed
Aerial pictures and airplane changed a host of things. While small teams flied around in planes using a camera at high altitudes. The camera then clicked images that used to be plotted and developed by the experts recruited in survey offices. Careful analysis of the images provided new knowledge. Whenever the higher a picture used to be taken, the more it used to be interpreted as the map. This is because objectivity used to be guaranteed through absence of anyone’s presence. Geographers in and around the world embraced the information portrayed through these high altitude pictures, enthusiastically.

Characteristic depictions
Images captured at high altitudes were latched on to, as unique objects of geography. This is because a landscape’s characteristic depictions could be precisely made simultaneously with photogrammetry’s cartographic potential. Teaching students for interpreting and seeing became a geographer’s main task. In the current times, landscape and environment changes got influenced by historical geography of viewpoints that was shaped by these photographs.