Wolaland
Linking cultural anthropology and GIScience
This Leverhulme Fund project is a collaboration of the Department of Anthropology of the Durham University (UK) and MicroGIS. It links together ethnographic and geographic research through the innovative use of GIScience technologies, using information from the highlands region of Papua New Guinea (PNG).
The research is part of a program that seeks to further our understanding of the impact of local farming and population growth on the environment from both the viewpoint of local people and according to scientific data.
The objectives are threefold:
- Firstly, to produce an interactive GISc archive on land use and demography in the Was valley of the Southern Highlands Province of PNG.
- Secondly, to undertake preparatory work to develop this archive into a participatory environmental monitoring tool involving the local population.
- And thirdly, to explore the scope for expanding the initial archive into a comprehensive ethnographic database and the methodological implications for anthropology.
Wolaland Interactive
An interactive Atlas of the Wola Land, as project result, is striving to maximise analytical capacity for users, with due regard to ethical issues. The system will be interactive, allowing users to view and analyze data according to their interests in human-environment interactions.
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