Our Changing
Landscape
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"From
the hilly tract that occupies from five to ten miles of the eastern
part, the intermediate country is but gently undulated to the Hudson.
Ranges of small hillocks are interspersed with extensive plains
or vallies..."
- Horatio Gates Spafford describing Columbia County,
1824
A Gazetteer of the
State of New York
We
live in a continously changing
landscape. Some characteristics, like the shape of the hills and
quality of rocks, may change slowly over geological time. Many of
the other features of the local landscape, however, have changed
rapidly with the changing nature of human settlement. Click on
one of the images above to see some of the ways we are exploring our
changing landscape...
The
image of the aerial photos links to our current project of digitizing
historical (1942/1946) aerial photos of Columbia County. See what your
neck of the woods looked like over 60 years ago.
Forest, Field, and Freeway is a recent report we've put out that brings
together diverse sets of demographic, socio-economic, agricultural, and
ecological information on Columbia County through the centuries.
It tells one slice of this story of change through maps, graphs
and an accompanying narrative.
Finally, we have started indexing
some of the maps and graphs that we have found and created over the
years to help tell the story of changes in the landscape of Columbia
County - feel free to explore!
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