Historic and contemporary photographs of Scottish landscapes form part of an exhibit investigating landscape change at the Royal Highland Show. Recent research by a team at the Macaulay Land Use Research Institute in Aberdeen aims to reveal the types and extent of changes in the Scottish landscape over the past century through a systematic comparison of historical and contemporary photographs.
The team is also interested in discovering how people perceive these changes and if changes in cultural features like buildings or on semi-natural features like woodlands are more easily identifiable.
Dr Inge Aalders, co-coordinator of the exhibit says, “Communities in rural Scotland often resist proposals for developments which involve major changes to familiar landscapes, for example those associated with windfarm developments, however they are less concerned about gradual or incremental changes in familiar landscapes which, through time, can be even more significant.”
“Careful re-photographing the scenes of old photographs with support of modern image processing technologies allow us to digitally match these historical images with contemporary images taken from approximately the same viewpoints. These can then be superimposed. This enables us to identify where changes have occurred and also to calculate how extensive these changes have been.”
By showing images of historical and contemporary photographs a wide range of people and asking them to ’spot the differences’, the team will be able to better understand what people perceive as significant differences and test various ideas about what makes some changes more or less acceptable.
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Information for Editors
The Macaulay Land Use Research Institute
The Macaulay Land Use Research Institute was founded in 1930 and is an international centre for research and consultancy on the environmental and social consequences of rural land uses. With an annual income from research and consultancy of over £11m, the Institute is the largest interdisciplinary research organisation of its kind in Europe, and aims to provide evidence to help shape future environmental and rural-development policy on a national and international basis. For further information, visit www.macaulay.ac.uk .
The Royal Highland Show
The Royal Highland Show 2009 takes place at Ingliston near Edinburgh Airport from Thursday 25th to Sunday 28th June. Touch, taste, see and hear the very best Scotland has to offer by way of entertainment, childrens’ activities, outdoor living & countryside, shopping & fashion, food & drink? and the finest farmyard animals. Royalhighlandshow.org/home