Field Photos Weekend: August 31-September 2

Last Labor Day weekend, we launched a project to try to collect as many pictures of our landscape taken at approximately the same time as we could. Well, that initial project worked so well, we’ve done it again. And again. And now, again. We are asking for citizen scientists, such as yourself, to participate in another Field Photos Weekend this Labor Day, August 31 – September 2, to try to take a look at the national landscape in a single instant.

Field Photo Weekends was created by the Southern Climate Impacts Planning Program (SCIPP; https://www.southernclimate.org), CoCoRaHS (http://www.cocorahs.org/), and the Earth Observation and Modeling Facility (http://www.eomf.ou.edu/). We did this to try to see how drought affected different areas of the country, from pastures and crops to lakes and waterfalls. In each of these Weekends, we have collected hundreds of photos from people such as yourself and posted them on the EOMF Photo Archive. Here are the previous events:
* Labor Day, 2012: http://www.eomf.ou.edu/photos/cocorahssep12/
* Presidents Day, 2013: http://www.eomf.ou.edu/photos/cocorahsfeb13/
* Memorial Day, 2013: http://www.eomf.ou.edu/photos/cocorahsmay13/
And yes, you guessed it, the photos from Labor Day 2013 will be posted here: http://www.eomf.ou.edu/photos/cocorahssep13/.

All you have to do is while you are out enjoying our parks, visiting family, or whatever activities you plan for the weekend, snap a couple of pictures and either send them to us (fieldphotos@southernclimate.org) or upload them directly to the EOMF website, http://www.eomf.ou.edu/photos. If you do upload your photos, please add the tag #CoCoRaHSSep13 in the Field Notes section so we can identify your pictures as part of this project. If e-mailing them is easier, that’s great. We’ll get them posted over the next couple of weeks and they will start popping up on the EOMF website. All we need to know is when and where the photo was taken, as specifically as possible (if you have a smartphone or GPS camera, it will record that info for you), and any other descriptions you want to add, such as “there is a whole lot more water here this year than there was last year”. Although we started out trying to look at drought, we found this is much more valuable in learning about our landscape, so if it’s green, that’s even better. Seeing change from one season or year to the next can be fascinating!

If you are wondering why there were so few photos from the first couple of events, well, we just weren’t smart enough to add the hashtag in the field notes section when we started. We are working our way back through to add those tags, so you will see more of those photos popping up on the maps soon. We’ve had about 600 photos each time we have tried this – maybe this time we can go over 1,000!

We started the project working with CoCoRaHS, but there are so many more people who can contribute so much to our understanding of our landscape. So if you are part of the National Phenology Network, Sierra Club, any other network, or just out on your own enjoying our natural beauty, we would love to have you join us. Let your friends and family know…and maybe brag to them that your photos are better than theirs!

For more details about the project and tips on setting location services on your camera, please see /news/field-photo-weekends

If you have any questions, please contact us at fieldphotos@southernclimate.org. Thank you and have a great Labor Day Weekend!

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