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The Pando Photographic Survey
FEATURESECTION
The Pando Photographic Survey:
By Ryan Thalman The Big Picture
In the high wilds above Richfield, Utah stands Pando, the world’s largest tree— an aspen clone comprised of over 40,000 genetically identical branches connected by a massive root system that spans across 106 acres of the Fishlake National Forest in the Fishlake Basin. A tree of one that defies every category we have for what a tree is or what a tree can be. The largest tree by weight (13.2 million pounds), the largest tree by area (106-acres above ground), and the largest aspen clone in the world, verified by genetic testing in 2008. A tree that redefines “tree," and one that we know very little about, though we are starting to learn more thanks to the work of Ryan Thalman, associate professor in the Natural Science Division at Snow College, and his work on the Pando Photographic Survey.
Since 2020, Ryan and his students, working with the executive director of Friends of Pando, Lance Oditt, have been working to create a photographic inventory of this botanical giant dubbed “The Pando Photographic Survey," a picture that scientists throughout the world can use to understand and study the tree remotely, and can be replicated shot-byshot so the world can see how this unique tree changes over time. In all, there are 8,600 locations captured by 360-degree camera teams led by Ryan and Lance. This represents just one of a number of programs Snow College and Friends of Pando are collaborating on to document Pando and work to better understand it while providing unique field experiences for Snow College students.
The Bigger Picture
While work on the Pando Photographic Survey will make history as the largest picture of a tree ever attempted, it draws its power from another well of inspiration—disability rights and the discipline of re-photography. In 2018, tree photographer Lance Oditt had begun to explore the use of 360-degree images and film to make otherwise inaccessible places accessible to people through their smart phones, desktop computers, and even virtual reality headsets.
Lance describes his time growing up in the 1980s before the Americans with Disabilities Act was law as being “defined by a family life where making plans often involved a discussion about what was accessible that we could all do together.” In his family, there were people born hard of hearing or deaf (including himself), and his cousin suffered a rare form of muscular dystrophy. His grandfather lost an eye working in a mine, and his mother was permanently disabled by a work injury and later died as a result. As Lance grew in his photographic practice, experiencing natural wonders in the West, he wanted to do more than take “postcard” pictures. Lance expressed, “I wanted to create work that could transport people into the places they likely couldn’t experience otherwise, in the physical sense.”
Going back to the beginning of modern land management and conservation, photographs have been used to document natural subjects and are still used to compare changes over time. Not just 2D images, but also stereograms, a precursor to today’s 360-degree image. So, Lance stated that he had the why and he tested the how. The real problem was how to scale the effort to the size of the tree, which everyone he talked to said was ambitious if not impossible altogether, and few, if any, thought it was scientific because the history of re-photography is not well understood. As Lance was searching for a way to overcome these hurdles, it was suggested that he talk to Ryan Thalman.
Ryan recounts meeting Lance in 2020 when he had prototyped the method and captured over four acres of the tree using a custom-built Insta360 camera rig. The real challenge, Ryan recalls, was not so much about the how as it was the
Photo Courtesy of Lance Oditt
Ngawang Salaka and Ryan Thalman practice camera techniques.
FEATURESECTION
Left to right: Ngawang Salaka, Janice Connell, Wilson Thorpe (back to camera), Ryan Thalman, Lena Lindsay, Kaylee Carlson, April Anderton, Kaci Anderton, Kyden Saner, and John Shattuck receive training on wilderness navigation techniques.
way to scale that effort up. Lance and Ryan worked for months on creating a map that today marks 8,600 locations that, when photographed, would allow someone to go to any point inside the tree. That map is really the key, because with it, you have the images and you have the record. Once the mapping challenges were solved, the rest was just logistics.
New Branches of Work
Initial work on the photographic survey took place in the summer of 2021 and continues through 2022, when the team plans to start releasing data. Believe it or not, though, that is not the biggest picture yet. The bigger picture is what the effort inspired. A lot of people who took part in the project in 2021 didn’t know much about Pando. During the summer field work, nightly education sessions were held as part of the photographic survey. This was followed up in fall of 2021 with workshops on campus as part of natural resource and foundations (general education) courses. Students learned that the tree is fighting diseases we don’t fully understand. They know the reason the tree is fenced in is to keep out deer and elk who eat away at Pando faster than it seems able to keep itself in balance. The more they learned, the more they wanted to know, and they wanted to know what else they could do.
In 2022, Ryan is working with Friends of Pando again, and not only on the photographic survey, but other projects helping monitor the tree, repair fencing, and conduct research to develop a more well-rounded understanding of the tree. In reference to the project, Ryan stated: “This is work we hope to do year-afteryear going forward because it provides field experience you can’t get anywhere else—working in our own back yard on research and preservation projects that make headlines all over the world, and help other people who also want to understand and enjoy Pando. It just doesn’t get any better than that for what I want to provide for my students.”
