NASA images track changes in Nepal
May 26, 2020
2019 Wall Scholar Mark Turin and 2017 Wall Scholar Sara Shneiderman are collaborating with the Yale Himalaya Initiative on a NASA funded project that combines fieldwork with satellite imagery to plan land use and new infrastructure in Nepal, India and Bhutan – all areas exposed to impacts of climate change, natural disasters, as well as tourism and infrastructure development.
The study will also help bridge the knowledge gap between well-studied changes in the urbanization patterns of big cities in the Himalayan region and the lesser-known effects on land use in smaller towns.
Mark Turin is an associate professor in the Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies (CIS) and the Department of Anthropology. His research and writing focus on language endangerment, documentation and revitalization; language policies and politics; orality, archives, digital tools and technology, and Indigenous methodologies and decolonial practice broadly conceived. Turin is also the recipient of a 2019 Wall Solutions award on the subject of “Mapping Linguistic Diversity in a Globalizing World through Open Source Digital Tools.”
Sara Shneiderman is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology. Her research explores the politics of state restructuring and reconstruction in Nepal’s post-conflict, post-disaster transformation, focusing on dynamics of citizenship, territory and religiosity, and is funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).
