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Posted 16 November 2011 by Benj in Facing Climate Change, Field Notes

Before the snow began to fall, I made a quick trip out to Hagerman, Idaho to revisit the Bell Rapids agricultural development for Facing Climate Change. Sara and I completed most of our fieldwork for that story in 2010, but it’s a tale of change in Big Sky Country and I knew I had to get above it. (Field notes from our first trip are here.)

Once again I turned to LightHawk for help. LightHawk is an organization that supports environmental initiatives with mission-based flights and this was our third collaboration for Facing Climate Change. With beautiful clear weather, pilot Dennis Fitzpatrick and I spent several hours in his Cessna working our way up the Snake River and over the 25,000 acres of abandoned fields.

What had been missing from our coverage – the scale of this economic shift and landscape-level change – was easily captured from the air. I made images of ghost pivots (the abandoned tracks of irrigation systems) under the shadows of new wind turbines, empty potato barns with their roofs blown off, and the Snake River winding its way through the dry plain.

A big thanks to Dennis and LightHawk and stay tuned for the release of this piece and the rest of our new climate change series later this year!