Research

The W. E. Upjohn Center for the Study of Geographical Change is a research center within the Western Michigan University College of Arts and Sciences. At the center we apply our base technologies to study areas in India, the Himalayas, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Southeast Asia. But we're not limited to any specific region or continent of the world.

We've digitized old maps and layered recent imagery with them to produce stunning results that evince the impact of humankind upon the earth's surface. We've rubber-sheeted pre-colonial maps and compared them against the most recent topos to assess their accuracies. And we've imaged and geo-referenced some pretty rare documents.

Take a moment to look around and examine some of our research and example projects and let us know how you like them. We appreciate your feedback and suggestions for candidate projects.

Lectures

Arthur Geddes Memorial Lecture

The Arthur Geddes Memorial Lecture given at the National Association of the Geographers of India, November 19, 2010, was titled "The Geospatial Re-discovery of India". Arthur Geddes, scion of the town planner Patrick Geddes, researched India and Bangladesh during much of his career as a geographer.

This lecture focuses on returning to the origins of trigonometrically accurate surveys of India to establish time and space integration in geospatial analyses of India. It also refers to some of Geddes' geographical work on India. The lecture features the long-forgotten Atlas of South India by Aaron Arrowsmith, the document that triggered the mapping of India using modern methods throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.

This lecture was made possible by a 2009-10 Digital Innovation Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies, for the project entitled "Reading Aaron Arrowsmith's Atlas of South India".

Raja Todar Mal Memorial Plenary lecture

The Raja Todar Mal Memorial Plenary Lecture, given at the Indian National Cartographic Association, Oct. 15, 2011, was titled "The Future of Historical Cartography" and is available in three sizes:

• The largest file (458 mb) allows some of the maps and graphics to be enlarged 1600 percent.
• A medium size version (<11 mb) allows viewing maps and graphics up to 300 percent magnification.
• A low resolution version.

Raja Todar Mal was a Hindu prince who organized the Mughal Emperor Akbar's land revenue system, which system was also carried over into the British colonial era. Land taxes were levied according to the productivity of land, which in turn had to be surveyed in order to evaluate productivity. Raja Todar Mal was deemed a "Navaratna" in Akbar's court – one of its "Nine Jewels".