From sugar plantations and slave huts to livestock pasturing and holiday homes, throughout history land use on the former Danish-owned island of St. Croix has experienced dramatic changes.
To analyse how the land has been used from 1750 to the present day, the island is to be mapped by a team of Danish researchers made up of historians, physical geographers and anthropologists using handheld computers and the analysis and visualisation tool (GIS) known as MapInfo from COWI. The work will be carried out as part of Denmark's Galathea-3 scientific expedition by a team of researchers, who will arrive in St. Croix in March 2007 to coincide with the arrival of the Danish expedition vessel "Vædderen".
The project, named "St. Croix past and present", is part of a bigger project to assess the sustainability and development of the island. One of the research team, physical geographer Niels Christian Nielsen from the University of Southern Denmark, explains: "With the help of historical maps and other sources, we will follow land use development on the island and collate our findings with the economic and social conditions pertaining to the time. We will examine whether there are places that tell us how the land was used, how big a part of the plantations were under cultivation and how they look today."
The research group is currently digitising a number of historical maps of the island, which will then be compared with modern topographical maps and aerial photographs. Selected sugar plantations can then be zoomed in on to localise fields and patches of forest. At the same time slave huts, plantation owners' residences, windmills, roads and bridges will also be registered.
The map data enable the team to collate more data as they drive around the island detecting changes in the landscape. "We hope that our research can contribute to a greater understanding of the landscape of St. Croix," says Niels Christian Nielsen. "The aim is for the project to culminate in a scientific article, but we also hope that the mapping we carry out will have good narrative value and be of use to the tourist sector or serve as educational material in universities." By Christina Tækker, cht@cowi.com Published: 23.10.2006