• Goren, Julia
  Adirondack Mountain Club and Utah State University
  summit@adk.org
  

For over twelve years the Adirondack High Peaks Summit Steward program has utilized photopoint monitoring to document changes in alpine vegetation with a particular focus on areas subject to human trampling. Photopoints are photographs of a landscape area taken repeatedly from the same exact position, showing qualitative changes over a set time. Images were analyzed for comparative changes in groundcover. (Project Phase I). In 2011, all 50 photopoints were re-taken, adding another cycle of images to this long term monitoring project. A subset of images was analyzed for comparative changes in density of spruce-fir species in order to determine changes in treeline or tree morphology. (Project Phase II)