Who We Are
The GeoREACH Lab supports Geospatial Research in Atlantic Canadian History and other projects of the Applied, Communications, Leadership & Culture (ACLC) program in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Prince Edward Island.
The Director of the Lab is Dr. Joshua MacFadyen, Canada Research Chair in Geospatial Humanities and faculty member in the ACLC program. Dr. MacFadyen’s area of research interest is Digital Approaches to Environmental History, which examines significant social-ecological transitions in Canadian agriculture using innovative digital history and geospatial analysis of case study areas in the Maritime, Eastern Great Lakes, and Prairie regions. It explores how rural Canadians exchanged one energy system for another by mapping the transition from an extensive organic frontier to intensive food and energy systems. By increasing our capacity to understand both the physical transformations of place and their social impacts, this research will help to inform better land use planning, resource co-management, and risk management in the future.
For more about our team, please see our People page.
What We Do
Researchers in the GeoREACH Lab are engaged in a variety of projects, from faculty-directed mapping initiatives to student research assistance on the lab’s core projects. The lab team uses Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to digitize historical maps and geospatial characteristics of rural food and energy systems in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The lab is also a base for several public engagement projects, from community mapping to the participatory research initiative The Back 50 Project.
To learn more about our current activities, please see the Projects page.
Recent Posts
- New PEI Map Resources
Introducing a collection of map resources for Prince Edward Island to supplement the GeoPEI layers and provide guidance on using these primary resources in essays and papers. This collection includes … Continue reading - Introducing the GeoGULF Gulf of St. Lawrence Historical Map Viewer!
Click the image above to try out GeoGULF, a new portal for exploring historical maps of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The core maps displayed in this early version are … Continue reading - Introducing the GeoPEI Prince Edward Island Historical Map Viewer
Click the image above to try out the GeoPEI a new portal for exploring maps, atlases, aerial photos, and geospatial data pertaining to the history of Prince Edward Island. The … Continue reading