Sam Droege's idea has lots of applications to the type of work that ecologists, foresters, land managers, and environmental citizen groups do and provides an easy (and actually information dense) way of tracking long-term changes using volunteers using the smart phone that many carry in their pocket. The concept is broad and is meant to be applicable to any location you would like to create uniform documentation of change over long or short periods of time without having to install a permanent camera.

The concept uses little more than a camera phone and a stout piece of bent steel to start.

A piece of angled steel is firmly mounted to provide a consistent height, angle and direction from which to shoot images using nearly any camera. When collected together, photo-stitching software aligns and pieces together images to show changes over time.

It ends with many smart minds coming together to create apps and sites that help communities collect images and stitch together a picture of change. Sign up to be involved.