rePhotoSA turns one!

Today marks one year since rePhotoSA was officially launched!

rePhotoSA is the citizen science repeat photography project of southern African landscapes and is a joint initiative between the Plant Conservation Unit and the Animal Demography Unit at the University of Cape Town (UCT). The project was first conceptualised in 2014 but really got going when the first wave of historical photographs were uploaded to the website on 12 August 2015.

The historical photographs uploaded to the rePhotoSA online database were selected from those housed at the Plant Conservation Unit. Currently we have over 20,000 digitised historical photographs from close to 60 different sources. The majority of photographs online are from 6 main photographers namely John Acocks, IB Pole Evans, Ulrich Nanni, Keith Cooper, David Jones and a selection from the Botanical Research Institute, now known as the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI).

Since the beginning of the year, rePhotoSA has been presented to captivated audiences at many events across the country, including several Animal Demography Unit Citizen Science Days, to members of the Mpumalanga Plant Specialist group at Buffelskloof Herbarium in May 2016, and recently to members of the UCT Photo Society.

Of the 5,133 historical photographs currently online, 17 repeats (0.3%) were uploaded by the end of 2015 and by the end of May 2016, 50 repeats (1%) were uploaded. As of today (12 August 2016), 63 repeats have been uploaded to the site (1.2%)! This is a great achievement for a project such as this one and we are proud of how far the project has come. 

We are so grateful to all citizen scientists who have contributed to this fantastic project so far! And we hope to see more uploads to the website in the near future. 

Happy birthday rePhotoSA :)

‪#‎rePhotoSA‬ #repeatphotography ‪#‎citizenscience‬ ‪#‎oneyear‬ #celebration