Photographs: Transects, quadrats and plots, 1959-1961

Component identifier:

Series 5

Content Summary:

This series comprises a large collection of photographs, mainly of transects, quadrats and plots which Costin and his colleagues established in Australian high mountain areas to enable research on the vegetation, soils and hydrology of these environments. The photos in this series relate to two distinct methodologies. One is the long-term measurement of changes in mountain environments in relation to various factors such as grazing and fire. The other is experimentation using plots to study infiltration, run-off and erosion.

Most of the photographs in this series derive from the technique of stereo photography developed by Costin's colleague Dane Wimbush to measure and record changes in vegetation. As Wimbush and Costin wrote in the Australian Journal of Botany in 1979, the method proceeded first by taking "overlapping pairs of photographs with a vertically mounted camera" (Vol. 27, p. 750). Costin and Wimbush then produced black-and-white prints in stereo pairs over each of which they placed a 100 square grid before viewing them under a stereoscope to show a three-dimensional image which could be traced to measure and record the percentage cover of four broad classes of vegetation. (In later research, they used colour slides.) The stereo pairs in this series are in the form of black-and-white prints taken in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The series also contains a small number of related photographs (mainly of landscapes).

This series provides data for the study of long-term changes in Australian high-mountain environments, but also allows researchers to gain insights into the development of photographic techniques and how they contributed to Costin's work.

Immediate source of acquisition:

This large and diverse collection was compiled by Alec Costin then organised and catalogued by the eScholarship Research Centre at The University of Melbourne from 2017-2019. The collection was then transferred to the National Library of Australia in 2020.

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