Wednesday Workshop: Recreating Archival Land Use Maps Using Remote Sensing and GIS Technologies: Yatenga, Burkina Faso 1954 and 1973

Join the DIL and Dr. Colin West from the Department of Anthropology for Recreating Archival Land Use Maps Using Remote Sensing and GIS Technologies: Yatenga, Burkina Faso 1954 and 1973. Social scientists working for the Office of Scientific and Technical Research Overseas (ORSTOM) in the 1970s and 80s founded the “terroir school” of French geography that produced rich descriptions of local land use practices across Africa. They had a passion (or perhaps obsession) for mapping and their case studies feature numerous beautiful maps of forests, savannas, agricultural fields and soils. This presentation describes the process of converting these archival maps to GIS layers so that changes in vegetation and agriculture can be visualized and eventually analyzed using GIS software.