Matt kindly agreed to share with VRMAG's readers some of his field trip experiences, while in the second part of the article you can enjoy an interview, discovering to what extents panoramas are becoming a crucial asset for any research documention.

Downloading data from a thermistor string I placed in Lake El'gygytgyn,
located inside a meteorite impact crater in Siberia.

"In August 2007, seven of us took a 10 days hike from the coastal plain to the mountains of Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, where we then spent another 2 weeks conducting glacier research. It was quite a hectic few days getting out here, and one of us got lost in the shuffle and didn't turn up until the next day, so we were glad of the good weather and dry ground to relax and eat our first dinner of the trip. You can see clearly here how flat the arctic coastal plain is and imagine the thousands of caribou that gave birth here the previous month.

click here to view Dinner on the Coastal Plain

We were privileged to arrive a Jago Lake shortly before a beautiful sunset occurred. Jago Lake lies inside of an ancient moraine left by a glacier from a prior ice age. This photo is special to me firstly because its the only group shot I have that has all of us in it, secondly because of the memory of the beautiful sunset, and thirdly because it represented to us our arrival in the mountains we had been hiking towards for the past several days and the point at which we were closer to our goal than our starting point. We took the next day off from hiking to enjoy this beautiful area further.

click here to view Jago Lake group shot

Jaeger Pass is a low saddle that can be used as a short cut to get from Jago Lake to McCall Glacier, but we went the longer, flatter way inside the valleys and just hiked up without packs for the view. The rocks here must have been deposited by an ancient glacier that rode up and over this pass. From here you can see the coastal plain we just hiked from and the stream that leads from McCall Glacier, our goal for the trip.

click here to view Jaeger Pass

Meltwater on the surface of the glaciers drains into small streams that feed into this large one, which has melted itself several meters into the glacier. The stream ends in a moulin -- a more or less vertical shaft carrying this melted-water to the bottom of the glacier. Falling into this stream is not advised.

click here to view the Supra-glacial Stream

Mt Suki lies above the highest part of McCall Glacier and was used as a survey monument during the 1950-1970s for glacier research. I have a panorama from this spot taken in 1958. Though I spend a lot of time in the mountains, I'm really not a big fan of heights, and getting to this photo spot required me to stand along side of a knife-edged ridge with several hundred meters of exposure in any direction. I was too chicken to stand on the rock and turn myself around, as the previous photographer had done, so I set up the tripod and Seitz motor drive and let the camera do the work. I was also too chicken to rotate the camera up or down, so the nadir and zenith holes are present, as well as me. I may well repeat this one in 2008 during our next trip, and bring a rope and long cable release so that I can get out of the shot.

click here to view Mt. Suki

We typically camp on a bench on a ridge overlooking the glacier. It is the only flat spot in the valley big enough to accommodate several tents and is fortunately south-facing for extra warmth. I've spent a lot of time over the past 5 years standing at this spot and taking in the scenery. We also have photos from here dating back 50 years, and over that time you can see the mountains slowly losing their coatings of ice and exposing more ice. The terminus of the glacier is about 4 km down the valley from this location. Fifty years from now, the terminus could well be visible from this location if current climate trends continue."

click here to view the camp

Can you tell us more about your background and passions?
I've lived in Alaska for about 20 years now, and for much of that time have had an interest in glaciers here. I pursued a masters degree at the University of Alaska Anchorage and a PhD at the University of Alaska Fairbanks where I began studying them professionally. I've been a professor at UAF for about 10 years now, and spend most of my time studying change in glaciers. I also have projects in hydrology, limnology, and science outreach, but glaciology is my favorite. I probably average about 6 weeks per year in remote regions, though with all of the preparations the field work activity consumes several months per year. My family accompanies me on all of my field work and is an integral part of all of my research and preparations, I would not spend so much time in the field if not with them.

Concerning your research projects, I would like you to talk about them, ideally projects where there are VR's.
My main professional interests are oriented towards gaining a better understanding of the impacts of climate change on the Arctic. Primarily I study glaciers there, but also lakes, permafrost and vegetation. Because these regions are so remote, there are typically no climate stations to track change and so we also use the impacts of climate change to understand what that change actually is. In the case of glaciers, nearly all glaciers here are thinning and retreating, and this can only be due to a change in climate -- it has either gotten warmer, drier or sunnier. These changes also influence the landscape in other ways, such whether the rivers erode or aggrade sediments, whether shrubby vegetation expands or retracts, and the type of wildlife that can survive there. I got into panoramic photography to document the current state of the Arctic, so that we have a nice photographic record against which we can compare future change, whether it be to glaciers, rivers, or vegetation. I believe that these photos nicely complement my more quantitative research, such as maintaining weather stations in these remote areas, measuring glacier volume change, and quantifying current vegetation distributions.

When and how did you start shooting panoramas?
I began shooting panoramas about 2000, when I bought my first point and shoot digital camera. They were all hand-held, cylindrical panoramas, with none of the panoramic-assisting features that current point-and-shoots have. This was a 1 megapixel camera, and the resulting Quicktime VRs were quite small and grainy -- I'm almost embarrassed to look at them now, but at the time they were state-of-the-art. I never really had much ambition to progress beyond this until 2007, when I began seeing some of the spherical VRs and gigapixel images online. So I invested in some high end DSLR equipment and panoramic rigs, and started down the slippery slope of becoming a better photographer...

How creating panoramas fits into your research and teaching activity?
I believe that they nicely complement my quantitative research. For example, it's useful to know that a glacier has lost a giga-ton of ice but these quantities are very difficult to comprehend, a pair of photos does a much better job. Panoramic photos go one step further and give people the opportunity to explore the environment in every direction, especially when there is a sufficient spatial density of such photos, such that one can jump from one to the other and really get the sense of being there. These photos also give scientists like myself the chance to "visit" the field again from our offices, when we have more time to look around and see things that might have been overlooked while in the field. Gigapixel VRs are especially useful in this context, as they have tremendous detail and offer something not only for everyone. For example, my primary use might be to better understand glaciers, but in the same scene geomorphologists can better understand erosion, botanists can better understand vegetation distribution, etc.

What do you think of interactive panoramas in general and as documentary medium?
I think they are great. The internet allows me to share these images with countless others, and the interactive abilities of spherical VRs add a new dimension to the experience that is not present with a flat, static image. We are currently in the middle of the 4th International Polar Year. These polar years occur every 25 to 50 years and attempt to provide a snapshot in time of the polar regions, involving tens of thousands of scientists from more than 60 countries. I believe these panoramic photos are an excellent means of documenting the state of the polar regions for this IPY, especially the gigapixel images with their tremendous resolution.

What equipment do you use?
I currently use a Nikon D2xs, a Gitzo 1530 tripod with Acratech levelling head, a Really Right Stuff panoramic rig, a Seitz VR motor drive, a walking stick monopod with tilt-head, a Nikkor 10.5 mm fisheye for spherical panoramas and a Nikkor 18-200mm zoom for higher resolution spherical and gigapixel scenes. All of these have been great performers, and I have no hesitation about recommending them.

What are your future panorama related projects?
I plan to continue taking panoramas in remote regions of the Arctic, primarily Alaska and Siberia. I've also been advocating their use to my colleagues at a variety of meetings and lectures, and I hope that they too will begin taking such photos. I've been posting mine at Arctic.360cities.net or in Google Earth.
I've got about 60 online now and have another 300 yet to be processed...

Links:
Matt Nolan's website
Arctic.360cities.net