title: Detecting one-hundred-year environmental changes in Western China using seven-year repeat photography.
abstract: Due to its diverse, wondrous plants and unique topography, Western China has drawn great attention from explorers and naturalists from the Western World. Among them, Ernest Henry Wilson (1876 -1930), known as 'Chinese' Wilson, travelled to Western China five times from 1899 to 1918. He took more than 1,000 photos during his travels. These valuable photos illustrated the natural and social environment of Western China a century ago. Since 1997, we had collected E.H. Wilson's old pictures, and then since 2004, along the expedition route of E.H. Wilson, we took 7 years to repeat photographing 250 of these old pictures. Comparing Wilson's photos with ours, we found an obvious warming trend over the 100 years, not only in specific areas but throughout the entire Western China. Such warming trend manifested in phenology changes, community shifts and melting snow in alpine mountains. In this study, we also noted remarkable vegetation changes. Out of 62 picture pairs were related to vegetation change, 39 indicated vegetation has changed to the better condition, 17 for degraded vegetation and six for no obvious change. Also in these photos at a century interval, we found not only rapid urbanization in Western China, but also the disappearance of traditional cultures. Through such comparisons, we should not only be amazed about the significant environmental changes through time in Western China, but also consider its implications for protecting environment while meeting the economic development beyond such changes.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory for Ecological Forecasting and Global Change, College of Forestry, Northwest Agriculture and Forest University, Yanglin, China.
authors.forename: Huai
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Kaipu
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Yin
authors.forename: Haiyan
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Shenxian
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Zhong
authors.forename: Ning
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.forename: Fusun
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Shi
authors.forename: Dan
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.forename: Qiuan
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.forename: Weifeng
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Zhihai
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Ma
authors.forename: Xiuqin
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Fang
authors.forename: Weizhong
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Pengxiang
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.forename: Changhui
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Peng
mesh_terms: D044822:Biodiversity; D002681:China; D002980:Climate; D057231:Climate Change; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources; D004784:Environmental Monitoring / Q000379:methods*; D005843:Geography; D006801:Humans; D010781:Photography / Q000379:methods*; D012621:Seasons; D013997:Time Factors