This project will investigate the long-term landscape and ecological impacts of population growth and pressure, urbanization, and agricultural intensification in the maya lowlands of southern…

The University of Florida (UF) Division of Sponsored Research has been awarded a $484,628.61 grant (Contract ID: 80NSSC20K1265) by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to investigate the long-term landscape and ecological impacts of population growth, urbanization, and agricultural intensification in the Maya lowlands of Southern Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize. The project will focus on accelerating archaeological understanding through the analysis of remote sensing data, facilitating the infusion of technological expertise in remote sensing into archaeological research, and regional landscape analysis and modeling. The research will utilize Landsat, Sentinel-2, and NASA's GEDI LiDAR and DESIS-30 hyperspectral datasets. This multi-year project does not have a set-aside designation, reflecting UF's broad research capabilities across various disciplines.

This project will investigate the long-term landscape and ecological impacts of population growth and pressure, urbanization, and agricultural intensification in the maya lowlands of southern mexico, guatemala and belize. The project will focus on three of the key elements of the IDS space archaeology sub-element: 1) to accelerate archaeological understanding through analysis of remotely-sensed data obtained from space borne and airborne platforms 2) to facilitate the infusion of technological expertise and capacity in remote sensing into archaeological research and 3) regional landscape analysis and modeling relating pre-historic human settlement patterns and subsistence strategies to environmental factors derived from remote sensing. For data analysis and processing specifically, we intend to focus on two major subsets of NASA imagery. First, we will be using landsat series (5,7,8) and ESA sentinel-2 data in google earth engine (gorelick ET AL. 2017) to model spatially coarse patterns of landcover across the study regions. Second, our project will focus on ISS utilizatio this multi-source effort will enable US to develop a more robust, NASA-centric approach to contemporary remote sensing in the maya lowlands.n, in particular the utilization of gedi lidar and DLR/TBE desis-30 hyperspectral datasets.