It’s a jump to the left, and a step to the right! You can’t put your hands on your hips because you’re holding a phone. You could bring your knees in tight and do the pelvic thrust if you really wanted to make for a fun day in the field! Biological monitoring with the use of photos really does take a jump to the left and a step to the right to get in just the right spot. Then you must account for the angle of the photo off the horizon for the photo to match the previous photos in that location. Even if the location and angel are not quite perfect, photo points are a great tool to produce long-term data to monitor biological conditions at a site. I use photo points to monitor biological conditions like quarterly invasive species cover, tree canopy density, anthropogenic trash accumulation pre- and post- maintenance, and vernal pool fullness. I have compiled a few sets of photo data to show you changes to some of my project sites over time. Photos below are from the Tijuana River Valley and a vernal pool mitigation site in Kearny Mesa.
Shelley Lawrence, Biologist