Aerial photography has been of vital importance in the development of a longer term view of the landcover and population dynamics thoughout Nang Rong.  Owing to its deeper temporal depth than satellite imagery, which only began sensing the landscape in the early 1970s, photography of Nang Rong has been collected from aircraft mounted cameras for nearly 20 years prior the first spaceborne Landsat sensor. 
    As the following series of photos shows, the changes on the Nang Rong landscape from the mid-50s through the mid-90s was dramatic.  In the early and mid-50s, when Nang Rong was very much a frontier, isolated from the major hubs of settlement, the human imprint throughout the region was minor.  Prior to the development of a connected market economy, the only inhabitants in the region were subsistence farmers, whose impact on the landscape was quite localized and isolated.  However, with the construction of roads and the burgeoning market economy in Thailand, in-migration to the region resulted in dramatic changes in land cover, especially in the broad tracts of pristine forest in the southwest.  Especially in Europe, the demands for crops spurred the agricultural development in Nang Rong.  The 1970s were an exceedingly dynamic decade in Nang Rong, with the majority of land conversion occuring in this 10 year span.  Again, examination of the series of photos below exemplifies the utility of aerial photography in tracking and investigating the marked changes in Nang Rong in the second half of the 20th century.  Below, the the left, is a zoomed in portion in the southwest of the region.  The broad expanses of forest that are apparent in the 1950s and 60s are all but gone in the 1980s and 90s, replaced by upland field crops and village settlement.