SHADOW Lake Nature Preserve works hard to restore and maintain the land that it owns and manages. In order to monitor our ongoing restoration work, we created a photo point project that will document the visual changes occurring as our restoration efforts progress in our Upland Forest. To monitor changes, staff and volunteers take a series of photographs at several specific locations each quarter to make observations on plant growth and general forest health seasonally and overtime. So far, we have completed a year and half of photo point monitoring work.

The comparison images above were taken one year apart from one another. The photos show how much the forest can change in just a single year. This past spring, 1,620 trees were planted as part of our Uplands Restoration Project. As the 1,620 trees continue to grow and restoration work continues in the uplands, we are excited to see what the habitat will look like in another year!