Mapping Changing Ecosystems: Understanding Our Impact on the Natural Environment

About the course

The course will use a particular case study area to explore its value in human culture, natural resources of the past and future, ecosystems and impact on climate regulation on a planetary and future-oriented scale.  We will use collective research and mapping to bring information together in an innovative way, to point out conflicts of interest and symbiotic relationships, in order to gain a deeper understanding of what is really happening in some of the most precious natural environments on our planet. We will chart their value to understand the dangers they are facing and how we might balance them.
The course will touch on radical cartographies, analyse value systems; such as ecosystem services, the wealth economy, embedded carbon footprint and modern slavery supply chains. We will analyse and map the relationships between biodiversity, human labour management, geo-capitalism and the value of clean natural resources such as freshwater and oxygen. The output of the course will be a set of large complex drawings and models which will present these interrelations combining latest data modelling techniques, input from experts living and working with communities on the ground, the analysis of historic information and first-hand contemporary narratives.