ABSTRACT
The growth of anthropological engagement with the importance of ‘place’ has roots in archeological approaches, and the use of aerial photography by some cultural ecologists. Spatial approaches exploded since the 1990s as more anthropologists saw advantages to using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and satellite remote sensing data and spatial analysis in their environmental research. This increased use of spatial analysis has also led the field to be more interdisciplinary, more team-based in its field research, and more integrative than in the past. These are directions that an engaged environmental anthropology must take if it hopes to be a part of addressing the challenges of climate change and environmental change. All along anthropology has borrowed from other disciplines to achieve this interdisciplinarity in spatial approaches, borrowing from ecology, geography and other disciplines.
