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What does the man on the blue exercise ball see when he looks around the recording studio of the TWiT Cottage? See for yourself!
If you log in on GigaPan.org you can take a "snapshot" and comment on items of interest around the studio. It might be interesting to see how many of these can be linked to references in specific netcasts... This nearly complete spherical perspective is best appreciated when viewed in Google Earth. This GigaPan was shot with a Canon SX10 IS camera on the Epic100 robot from GigaPan Systems (http://www.gigapansystems.com/). The GigaPan was stitched from 160 original 10 megapixel images shot as a 20 column by 8 row grid, over a span of about 10 minutes. The resolution of this GigaPan is far less than this camera is capable of (I didn't use full zoom), simply because I didn't want to take more of Leo's time after the show than necessary. There are a number of stitching errors in this GigaPan that are not strictly the fault of the GigaPan Stitcher software. For example, the Stitcher software successfully stitched the chatroom text, but consequently misaligned the edges of the monitor. This reflects the time that passed between images and the fact that the scrolling text has more unique control points for stitching than the monitor edges. Other stitching misalignments may be due to the fact that I didn't actually have the camera's nodal point precisely centered (since this is not generally necessary for the majority of distant landscape shots I've been taking most of my current trip - e.g.: http://ron.outcrop.org/blog/?p=384). |
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As the Laurentide glacier retreated from the Champlain Valley 13,600 years ago, the ice damned the valley and Glacial Lake Vermont rose to about 170 m (550 feet) above sea level, which is the elevation of the camera. This sand and gravel was carried by an ice-marginal river that built kame terraces until it reached the lake where it dumped fine sediments into the standing water forming a delta more than 4 km long.
This quarry is the source of material that is spread on snow-covered roads in Salisbury. It is being sorted and stockpiled this month. Notes: I used a Nikon D40 with Nikkor 300mm f/4.5 AI-s lens, f/8, 1/160 second, ISO 200, NEF. 35mm equiv is 450mm. Field of view set to 3 degrees. |
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Pine-Oak-Heath-Sandplain Forest at Camp Johnson -- Forests like this are common south of Vermont, but restricted to a few locations within the state (see http://gigapan.org/gigapans/34970/ for another location). The distinguishing feature is the presence of pitch pine (Pinus rigida) which is near the northern limit of its range here. This forest type occurs only on sandy plains which were created when sediment laden rivers built huge deltas into a post-glacial lake or estuary about 13,400 years ago. This site is 100 meters above sea level and about 8 km (5 mi) upstream from the mouth of the Winooski River near Burlington, VT. See http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/camp-johnson-vt.htm
More information follows in a comment. |
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Pine-Oak-Heath-Sandplain Forest, Salisbury, Vermont -- Due to the presence of pitch pine, this is one of the rarest forest communities in Vermont, known only from the deltaic sandplains of Colchester (http://gigapan.org/gigapans/30324/) and this stand in the Salisbury Town Forest. The parent material for the droughty, acid soils is a 13,600 year old deposit of sand and gravel that is about 20 m deep here (an exposure of the deltaic strata under this surface can be seen here: http://gigapan.org/gigapans/34814/). Students at Middlebury College under the direction of Matt Landis have been describing the forest composition and population structure of this stand, and addressing questions about its disturbance history and the probable fate of the pitch pines. Results suggest that pitch pines have not reproduced in this part of the stand for many decades, and that many of the large pitch pines are dying. Most trees marked with flagging in this view are pitch pines.
Some botanical and technical information is in a comment. |
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Hemlock Forest in the Salisbury Town Forest -- Eastern hemlocks are responsible for more than 75% of both tree density and canopy cover in this stand, and hardwoods scattered among the hemlocks include three species of oak. The dark forest floor supports little more than mosses. Many of the trees here are about 200 years old, making it the oldest stand in the Salisbury Town Forest. A few trees are 300 years old, including two hemlocks in another GigaPan (http://gigapan.org/gigapans/35738/) and possibly the white oak near the center of this scene. Logging has occurred here (cut stumps are present in the stand) but it has been less thorough than most places in Salisbury and Vermont.
This stand occupies a southeast-facing slope with thin till-derived soils over Cheshire quartzite. Some botanical and technical information is in a comment. |
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Northern Hardwood Forest – Sugar maple and American beech are common in this stand and provide the yellow glow. Beech trees have reproduced by root sprouts far from the main trunks and form a dense sapling thicket. These saplings and some young sugar maples have held onto their yellowed leaves and brighten this scene after most canopy leaves have fallen.
The soil parent material at this site is silty deltaic bottomset beds deposited 13,600 years ago under 25 m of lake water near the mouth of a proglacial river. The abundant stones that were gathered to build the wall suggest a close proximity to the glacial ice that was constraining the spread of the ice-contact delta. Although most of the tree species here can live 300 to 400 years, few if any in this stand are more than 100 years old. The near side of the stone wall was an agricultural field until World War II. The far side has been a forest since about World War I, but was heavily logged in the last few decades. Some botanical and technical information is in a comment. |
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Mesic Red Oak-Northern Hardwood Forest, Salisbury, Vermont -- This well-drained kame terrace in the Salisbury Town Forest supports a dry example of this forest type with three oak species. The forest community is distinguished by the absence of sugar maple, an important component of hardwood forests on less droughty sites. It includes red oak, white oak, and chestnut oak, and I think at least one black oak (I have yet to get my hands on a leaf or acorn from it).
Some botanical and technical information is in a comment. |
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Dry Oak Forest in the Salisbury Town Forest. Thin, till-derived soil on this gentle south-facing slope supports a stunted forest of white, chestnut, and red oak. These species grow more than twice as tall elsewhere on deeper or wetter soils. Shrubs, herbs, and grasses take advantage of the ample sunlight passing through the sparse canopy. The similar size of the oaks suggests they are similar in age, and that they colonized the site after the previous vegetation was removed by logging or fire about a century ago. There are lots of seedlings of all three oak species, and if deer don't eat them, this forest type could persist here as the first generation trees mature and die.
More information is in a comment. |
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Limestone Bluff Cedar-Pine Forest at Lone Rock Point, Vermont – This forest type, dominated by northern white cedar (Thuja occidentalis), is common in Vermont only where calcareous cliffs overlook Lake Champlain. At Lone Rock Point, thin soil among the outcrops of Dunham dolostone supports a stunted cedar forest with eastern hemlock and several other trees.
Harvesting of the rot-resistant cedar trunks and other trees has disturbed this site, but 300 year old trees are present elsewhere on the lake shore, and 1000 year old cedars grow on cliffs of the Niagara Escarpment in Ontario, Canada. The location of this site is depicted in the following GigaPan: http://www.gigapan.org/viewGigapan.php?id=30397 More information follows in a comment . |
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I reshot the Emmons Glacier at a slightly different exposure in hopes of bringing out some of the glacial features that might have been overexposed in the larger Rainier Sunrise GigaPan: http://www.gigapan.org/gigapans/31687/ |