China Water and Soil History Network

This ArcGIS Story Map contains nearly 100 photographs that Lowdermilk took in 1943 during his travels in Gansu 甘肃 and Shaanxi 陕西. Because this set features some well-known sites, many of which I have visited, the task of finding more recent images for comparative purposes has proven easier than with...

I have finished another ArcGIS map containing a second set of photographs that Lowdermilk took in Sichuan Province 四川省 at the conclusion of his 1943 survey. Walter C. Lowdermilk Sichuan Photographs 2 I also did another quick "virtual repeat photograph" experiment using images with captions containin...

In my previous post, I mentioned that attempts to do historical-current repeat photography to facilitate environmental history research might benefit from crowdsourcing. After Stevan Harrell brought that post to the attention of his colleague at the University of Washington, Daniel Abramson, Dan pro...

Many of the images in the Walter C. Lowdermilk collection at UC Berkeley's Bancroft Library come from Huajialing 华家岭 in Gansu Province 甘肃省's Tongwei County 通渭县, where Lowdermilk took numerous pictures of terraced slopes and gullies. You can view a set of those photographs, which also contains some i...

These two maps contain over 100 photographs taken in Qinghai 青海 by Walter C. Lowdermilk during his 1943 survey of northwest China. In addition to some truly breathtaking vistas, the first set features images of the Yellow River, active sand dunes, Xi'ning 西宁, Qinghai Lake 青海湖, forest plantations, be...

Click the link below to view an ArcGIS map containing 60 photographs taken by Lowdermilk in August 1943 while travelling in Northwest China's Gansu corridor (河西走廊). Walter C. Lowdermilk Gansu Corridor Photographs I am wondering about the stele pictured in the photo above, but have not researched the...

I have finished another ArcGIS map containing the photos that Lowdermilk took in Sichuan Province 四川省 before and during the first leg of his 1943 trip from southwest to northwest China. You can access the map via the link below. Walter C. Lowdermilk Sichuan Province Photographs 1 This photo of Lowde...

Almost a decade ago, I published an article in the Journal of Asian Studies (download it here) on migration, land use, and environmental change in a place in north-central Shaanxi Province 陕西省 called Huanglongshan 黄龙山. During World War II, China's Nationalist government resettled thousands of people...

The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley holds a collection of nearly 800 historical photographs taken by the American soil and water conservation expert Walter C. Lowdermilk  in 1943 during his investigative tour of northwest and southwest China. These images document the agra...

The China Soil and Water History Network features research outcomes and source materials related to the history of land use, environmental change, and water and soil conservation in northwest China’s Loess Plateau region from the early-twentieth century to the present. The goal of the project is to...