CONTENTS

 

 

Seminar this Thursday – “Lidar and Landscape Legacies in the Maya Lowlands”

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“Lidar and Landscape Legacies in the Maya Lowlands: Insights from Belize”

Brett A. Houk (Texas Tech University, Lubbock) and
Amy E. Thompson (The University of Texas at Austin)
Thursday, September 4 at 2:00 pm EDT / 1:00 pm CDT / 11:00 am PDT

The central Maya lowlands is notable for its pre- and post-Columbian archaeological resources as well as its place in the history of aerospace and remote sensing in Latin America. As early as the 1970s, Maya archaeologists began working with NASA engineers to develop innovative remote sensing technologies to search for Maya sites from the air and from space. While these early efforts had mixed results, they paved the way for the adoption of airborne lidar to penetrate the dense forests of the Maya lowlands to map large swaths of land, which revolutionized our ability to use remotely sensed data to reveal both ancient anthropogenic and natural landscape features. In this presentation, Houk and Thompson will discuss several lidar datasets from different regions of Belize, and the impacts of modern vegetation and topographic variation that must be considered while using lidar data to remotely observe pre-Columbian settlement. They will also show the effectiveness of lidar to study 2,500 years of landscape history in northwestern Belize. Their analysis is framed around landscape legacies—the physical remains of human-caused disturbances to the landscape—to examine Late Preclassic and Classic Maya settlement and the extensive disturbances caused by British logging in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The findings from the study regions highlight the trajectories of using remotely sensed data to elucidate landscape legacies. 

 

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Thursday September 11: Sebastián Díaz Angel Presents “Cold War and Satellite Diplomacy”

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“Cold War and Satellite Diplomacy: The First Panamerican Symposium on Remote Sensing (Panama City, 1973)”

Sebastián Díaz Angel (Postdoctoral Researcher, CLIMASAT project, Institut d'Història de la Ciència, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain)
Thursday, September 11 at 2:00 pm EDT / 1:00 pm CDT / 11:00 am PDT

Abstract: This talk examines the "First Panamerican Symposium on Remote Sensing," held in Panama City in 1973, as a critical moment for satellite data infrastructure formation in the Americas. Organized by the U.S. EROS Program, the Pan American Institute of Geography and History, the Inter-American Geodetic Survey, and Panama's Instituto Geográfico Nacional Tommy Guardia, this symposium represents a key event for understanding how satellite technologies became embedded in hemispheric power relations during the Cold War. Drawing from symposium proceedings and archival materials, Sebastián Díaz Angel analyzes how remote sensing technologies were framed as necessary tools for national development and environmental management. The symposium both reinforced existing power asymmetries and created opportunities for Latin American countries to assert influence over emerging satellite data infrastructures. This historical case study illuminates how early remote sensing collaborations established enduring patterns in data governance, science diplomacy, and surveillance infrastructure that continue to shape contemporary debates on technological sovereignty, national security, environmental management, and resource development in the Global South.

 

More “Aerospace Latin America: A History” Seminars in September

Mark your calendars for the two remaining seminars in the “Aerospace Latin America: A History” series. Here’s what’s coming up each Thursday in September at 2:00 pm EDT / 1:00 pm CDT / 11:00 am PDT.

SEPTEMBER 18

Sean T. Mitchell (Rutgers University–Newark)
“An Ethnographic History of Brazil’s Spaceport”

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SEPTEMBER 25

Brad Massey (NASA History Office)
“Satellites, Sterilized Flies, and the Screwworm Scourge: NASA, la Comisión Nacional del Espacio Exterior, and the Mexican-American Screwworm Eradication Campaign, 1972–1980

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