As a state, Kansas has been around since 1861. In that time, much of the topography has changed. For instance, we now have a lot more trees. These changes are revealed in a new book of photographs by a University of Kansas biologist. Commentator Rex Buchanan says the book is worth checking out.
(Transcript)
Say what you want about death and taxes. Here’s something else that’s certain. Things change. Allow enough time and continents move. Mountains rise and erode. Species change.
I’m not necessarily talking long periods of time here. We’ve all seen climate-related changes, just in a few decades.
There’s a new book that pinpoints change in our part of the world. One Hundred and Fifty Years of Change on the Great Plains is by KU biologist Town Peterson.
The book is based on the technique of rephotography, starting with a set of existing, older photographs, then taking new photographs from the same location where the old photos were taken and comparing the two.
Peterson began with photographs taken by Robert Benecke in 1873 along the Kansas Pacific Railroad, roughly along today’s Interstate 70 and old Highway 40 between Kansas City and Denver. Peterson replicated those photos, moving from east to west.
I’ve been involved in several rephotography projects because they’re a good way to document geologic changes. For a process that sounds simple, rephotography is challenging, in part because the landscape can change so much that finding the original locations is difficult. Sometimes, if a river changes course, for example, the original location no longer exists. Peterson says that forced him to make some difficult decisions about where to take his new shot.
One joy of this book is simply seeing a set of 1873 Kansas photographs that I didn’t know about. This isn’t exactly pre-settlement Kansas. Kansas City is bustling. Bridges span the rivers. Little towns have sprung up all the way west and it’s fun to see them in their infancy. I had no idea that a large railroad roundabout—a place for turning locomotives around—existed in Brookville, a little town I pass through regularly.
Other photos are more poignant. An image of buffalo trails in a pasture north of the town of Bunker Hill, near Russell, is a reminder of an animal that was pretty much gone by 1873.
But Peterson’s point isn’t simply to ponder old-time photographs. It’s to look for changes in the landscape. And boy are they obvious. The big difference: vegetation. Almost all the new landscape photos in eastern Kansas show a profusion of trees in places that were previously grass-covered. Mount Oread here in Lawrence was an open, grass-covered landscape in 1873, now it looks like a forest.
New vegetation dominates many of the other photos. We’ve suppressed fires, for obvious reasons, and trees and brushy vegetation grow in places where they didn’t used to be.
Before you decide that all this is just an academic exercise, know that there are lots of conversations about the influx of brushy vegetation and trees into the prairies of Kansas today. Cedars and hedge trees have taken over acres and acres, mostly because of fire suppression. People sometimes call that wave of trees “the green glacier.” They crowd out prairie grasses that pastures produce, and thus reduce the pasture’s usefulness for grazing.
One of the cool things about Peterson’s book is that it’s free, publicly available on KU’s scholar works platform.
Check it out. Look at the differences for yourself. Consider the meaning of it all. Because we all know, change is gonna come.
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Commentator Rex Buchanan is an author, explorer and director emeritus at the Kansas Geological Survey. He lives in Lawrence.