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New dimension
History's Sara Gregg envisions that technology will aid in historical
research.
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A recent grant proposal by Sara Gregg describes how a relatively new
technology will aid historical research.
"Very few traditional historians have grappled with this technology,"
said Gregg, an assistant professor of history, "but I believe this
will prove to be an invaluable tool to compliment historical research."
Gregg is talking about the Geographic Information Systems or GIS, a software
program used to manipulate spatially referenced data.
"GIS can deepen the analytical possibilities, particularly for environmental
and agricultural historians," she said. "So far GIS hasn't been
used very much in historical research. I'm eager to apply it to my work."
Gregg will have that opportunity after recently being awarded a Special
Research Initiation Grant (SPRIG) by the Office of the Vice Provost for
Research and Advanced Studies for her project "Mapping Conservation
Policy Outcomes: Adding a New Dimension to Historical Research."
These grants provide "seed" money to begin research or scholarship
or to fund new directions in an existing research program.
In Gregg's case, she's using the SPRIG funding to expand the conclusions
from her Ph.D. dissertation by applying GIS analysis to her research as
she works to develop her dissertation into a book. She's working on a
long-term project to look at the history of land use and conservation
policy in Appalachia in the 1920s and 1930s.
Gregg is contrasting two different situations where the federal government
attempted to establish national parks in those areas during the Great
Depression. One area became the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia,
while a similar park project fell through in Vermont's Green Mountains
before the Green Mountain National Forest was created in the mid 1930s.
In Virginia, prior to the creation of Shenandoah National Park, the mountains
were owned or squatted upon by long-time residents. The land was typically
utilized as farmland, supporting crops and livestock. When the national
park was established, many of the residents were evicted from their property
and the land was turned back into forest.
In conjunction with the Honors Program at Iowa State, Gregg is mentoring
two freshman on analyzing the data collected from these residents, and
she plans to map the farms onto historical maps using GIS this spring.
"Part of what happened when the families were moved out, was that
houses were burned and the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) came in to
landscape and reforest the mountains," she said. "It was very
useful for the forest ecosystem but resulted in the creation of what we
could call a ‘renovated' natural park.
"Most of the national parks are managed like this to a certain degree."
Using the funding from the SPRIG, Gregg will analyze the ecological impacts
of how land was used before the Shenandoah National Park was established,
comparing it with the ecological condition of the land now that it is
a national park decades later.
To do this, Gregg will utilize aerial photographs, taken during the 1920s
of what later became the Shenandoah National Park, to compare with satellite
images of the same territory in the 1970s. This variation on time-lapse
analysis will offer a new perspective on forest change in the Appalachian
Mountains.
By digitizing the old photographs and overlaying that data with modern
satellite images, Gregg expects to develop a better understanding of how
the land changed over the decades.
"While this methodology has obvious promise for analyzing the effects
of human activity on the natural landscape, it is a relatively new innovation
in historical research," she said "I hope that the Rural and
Agricultural History program at Iowa State will become a pioneer in applying
these research methods to the history of agriculture and rural land use."
Around LAS
February 7-20, 2005
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