New Battlefronts on Old Battlefields

Editor’s note: Each semester, students in the Geospatial Analytics Ph.D. program can apply for a Geospatial Analytics Travel Award that supports research travel or presentations at conferences. The following is a guest post by travel award winner Rachel Layko as part of the Student Travel series.

This April, I had the opportunity to attend the International Association of Landscape Ecology (IALE) – North America Conference in Raleigh. I presented on behalf of our research team, “Collaborative climate adaptation planning at NPS mid-Atlantic battlefield parks.” This project represents our team’s efforts to understand how climate change impacts pose threats to historical landscapes, like battlefields. Our work focuses on small battlefield parks in the mid-Atlantic region that have historically been understudied when it comes to climate impacts and face unique threats like proximity to urban areas and high risk of flooding. These parks are maintained to be true to their historical character and act as “snapshots in time” so that visitors can learn about the historically and culturally important landscapes. This work is part of a collaboration between North Carolina State University faculty and researchers and partners from the National Park Service. Our team includes resource managers and climate change scientists from the National Park Service and faculty from North Carolina State University representing expertise in anthropology, landscape architecture, landscape ecology, and climate science. Together, we are working to assess the vulnerability of cultural and natural resources to changing climate in National Park Service Lands.

IALE was our team’s first presentation for this project and challenged us to transform many of the conceptual approaches we had been thinking through into engaging visuals for a broader audience. Session attendees asked fantastic questions from how we could engage communities surrounding the park, to how cultural landscapes are defined and prioritized, to strategies for engaging other types of partners in our work. Given that we are still in the early stages of this project, it was really helpful timing to think about how we might implement the feedback from attendees, especially about the broader impacts of this work.

As a first-time IALE attendee, I really appreciated the small size of the conference and the chance to engage with other attendees. I co-organized a session with Dr. Jelena Vukomanovic and Dr. Kate Jones, “Co-production through Science Partnerships”. To foster more time for discussion and conversation, Dr. Vukomanovic organized a lunch for presenters during our session. The lunch provided time for conversation about the opportunities and challenges researchers have encountered in their co-production processes, which was a highlight of the conference for me. Other highlights include the chance to meet CGA alumni like Dr. Nikki Inglis, attend conference socials, and hear about other creative approaches to complex real-world problems. I am looking forward to future conference conversations!

Acknowledgments: Thank you to Dr. Jelena Vukomanovic, Dr. Kate Jones, Dr. Kofi Boone, Dr. John Millhauser, Dr. Erin Seekamp, Garrett Silliman, Bob Page, Dr. Amanda Babson, James Nyman and other partners with the National Park Service. Thank you to the Land Change Lab members for their feedback and support, Dr. Shannon Jones for her figure creation, and Tommy Ingalls for the blog post title.