Geography HiMViD | High Mountain Visual Database: Repeat Photography

Repeat photography has evolved as a valuable tool to detect and analyse land use and land cover change. A comparative interpretation of the original photographs with their latter replicates allows for a detailed assessment of change or persistence of landscape features. Based on a visual interpretation of repeat photography, vegetation dynamics and changes in land use and settlement pattern can be identified. This method has also been widely used to detect glacier changes since the late 19^th century. It is possible to identify fluctuations of the glacier terminus, changes of the ratio between debris-covered and non-debris-covered glacier parts, ice cliffs and vegetation succession in the vicinity of the glacier portal. As such, repeat photography has become a valuable tool for communicating effects of global change. The same holds true for capturing seasonal variability.