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Afterfire: what we see, how we see

Project Abstract: 
As the climate warms, fires are increasing in size and frequency. In the US, the fires that command most of the media’s attention occur in the west and southwest, but most states have some number of wildfires every year. In Michigan, for example, the state’s Departent of Natural Resources in 2020 responded to 203 wildfires that combined burned 960 acres. Although the striking images of burning landscapes are widely viewed, the aftermath of fires – and especially the decades-to-centuries of landscape regrowth – is documented much less frequently. We propose to photo-document the chronosequence of burn plots and explore how what we see in the forest is conditioned by our expectations and constrained by our visual systems. By photographing the burn plots from identical vantage points and in a range of wavelengths (visible, ultraviolet, infrared), we will create a portfolio of work that asks the question: does our reliance on reflcted light in the normal visual range of humans (380–750 nm) create a metaphorical mirror of our own, limited vision; a mirror that constrains our imagination and defines our interpretation of “recovery” or “regrowth” of burned forests.
Photos or Graphics: 
Example of structured grid of photographs taken from the same vantage point but in different wavelengths
Investigators: 
Status of Research Project: 
Years Active: 
2022 to 2023
Research sites: 
Methods: 
We propose to photo-document the chronosequence of the UMBS burn plots. As this will be our first visit to UMBS, we do not have specific locations in mind, but we will create images from identical vantage points and in a range of wavelengths (visible, ultraviolet, infrared). We use modified digital cameras to create photographic images outside of the human perceptual spectrum. We use a Nikon D800 to capture visible-light images; a Nikon D3000 from which we’ve removed its infrared blocking filter to capture infrared images; and a D3000 with a UV filter to capture ultraviolet images. Images are displayed in structured grids that include visible, desaturated (monochrome), infrared, and ultraviolet images. The immediate visual comparisons permit us and the viewers to conceptualize different ways of seeing the forest and what these differences suggest in terms of forest successional dynamics.