Kansas State Geography - Antilles Bowman Expedition

Geographic Information Systems Spatial Analysis Laboratory (GISSAL)
Kansas State University
164A Seaton Hall
Manhattan, KS 66506-2904
Tel: 785-532-5865
Fax: 785-532-7310
Email: gissal@k-state.edu

Place-based Research in the Antilles: The Second Bowman Expedition

The Second Bowman Expedition of the American Geographical Society (AGS), focusing on the island nations of the Greater and Lesser Antilles, supports the AGS commitment to inform the public and governments about foreign geography in support of better policy making. This project, along with the initial expedition to Mexico in 2006 and 2006 (Mexico Indigena) seeks to help accomplish the AGS vision of sending field teams to every country in the world to gather geographic information, conduct place-based research, and combat geographic ignorance.

Following the highly successful Mexico Indigena effort, a partnership led by the American Geographical Society has been awarded funds to conduct fieldwork throughout the Antilles Region. Kansas State University has accepted primary responsibility for building and maintaining a multi-resolution, open source GIS database for the entire Antilles Region. Virginia Tech will conduct a comparative analysis of water resource issues in the Dominican Republic and Haiti. LSU will focus on land-use and land cover dynamics as they relate to tourism, the dominant economic sector in the Leeward segment of the Lesser Antilles. Miami and Hofstra Universities will compare and contrast rural economic conditions, land use change, and job prospects in three independent countries of the southern Lesser Antilles. Indiana University will conduct field-based research to investigate the consequences of rapid urbanization in Trinidad and rapid coastal zone tourism-related development in Tobago. The University of Kansas will coordinate the effort among participants, report to AGS, and interface onsite with the sponsor.