GLP Fall Featured Scientist Laura Sauls

I think I would classify myself most as a human-environment geographer, which means, for the most part, I get to dabble in a bunch of sub-fields and work with different types of data and methods, literatures, and interdisciplinary collaborators. I think that at the heart of dealing with changing human-environment relations are questions that demand interdisciplinarity and collaboration, and that is what I prioritize in my research. Most of the work I do is in and on Central America (especially Guatemala and Honduras), including some of the research that helped inspire the Realizing the Social Benefits of LSS Data Working Group under GLP. Along with my co-WG leads, Rose Pritchard and Tim Foster from the University of Manchester – as well as a broader team of really stellar international scholars – I am engaged in the Just Earth Observation for Conservation (JEOC) project. While this project examines how earth observation data is used in terrestrial area-based conservation, I also work with other GLP members – such as on migration and remittances, and land rights and tenure – to bridge remote sensing and large quantitative datasets with qualitative data to address questions related to climate justice and social inclusion. 

I think the nature of the questions I want to answer and the problems I want to address in the world have led me to a more serious engagement with land systems science, especially over the past several years. At times, some of what land systems science has produced has been the subject of critique from scholars whose work I value and draw on from cognate fields (political ecology, a field I also identify with, comes to mind); at the same time, there has increasingly been work within LSS that I find inspiring, useful, and really necessary given the scope of the challenges that we – as all humans in a rapidly changing world – face. Given JEOC’s focus on data in conservation, and the ways that land systems science has been so influenced by the expansion of accessibility to both big data and data processing and analysis capacity, it really seems like an ideal time to be delving more and more into land systems science. And for me, land systems science has helped me to think about patterns in land use change in particular across cases and sites more synthetically and comparatively, which for me is really a strength within the field. 

Well, we all need more time in the day so that we can hopefully start doing more activities (meetings, webinars, maybe a review paper) together; however, I think that, along with the recently instituted Remote Sensing for LSS WG, we are really hoping to draw attention to the data choices and methodological approaches that underpin land systems science. I think one of the key texts I always refer back to, even though it’s nearly 30 years old, is People and Pixels, produced by the National Research Council Committee on the Human Dimensions of Global Change. The power of tools such as remote sensing is immense compared to where we were in 1998, and the capacity to collect, process, and deploy a diversity of ‘big’ datasets so much greater, and yet I think some of the fundamental questions that these scholars posed regarding data integration and the potential social implications of the use of earth observation data remain open, and may well apply to many other forms of ‘big’ environmental data. I hope that we, within this working group and the GLP, can really intentionally take up and take seriously these types of questions. 

The researchers within the GLP community are already at the forefront of both producing global land data and I think problematizing it – and that is one of the things that makes the community so valuable! Land systems science crosses disciplinary boundaries, and for that reason it really has the potential to push forward critical and applied engagement with this explosion of land data that could be transformative for our understanding of landscape change and the socio-ecological processes that underpin it. Land systems scientists are generally incredibly thoughtful about what data they generate and use for their analyses, and how they engage in the data life cycle. What I would argue is that by taking land data – and their impacts – seriously as objects of inquiry, we can enhance GLP members’ ability to concretely inform decision-making across scales by foregrounding our intentionality about what data we should be using, and how, to act in an era of increasing urgency around key socio-ecological crises. 

My first GLP experience was on the Remittances WG, and it was a fantastic opportunity to both meet a broad group of land systems scientists and to learn a lot about producing synthesis work with a large and diverse group of collaborators. I also enjoyed the Week of Land Systems Science, and hope we can have more webinars and structured online events soon. I have also learned a lot about the business of trying to bring scientists together through conversations with the IPO; I have really valued the opportunity to see that side of the network, too.

Here’s a secret: I originally thought I’d do a PhD on urban sustainability, and absolutely did not want to address issues like REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, etc.), which I had seen negotiated firsthand while working on the climate negotiations team at the U.S. EPA and thought were far too politically charged and somehow simultaneously too technically complex. Within four months of starting my PhD, I had been sucked into a project on forests, conservation, and climate sequestration in Central America (thank you, Denise Humphreys Bebbington!) – which hearkened back almost 10 years to the research I had done as an undergraduate honors student! So, as much as I tried to get away, I think I’ve always been called to work on challenges around land and forest governance in the region – and I am so grateful I had the opportunity to figure that out.