Ground Truth: Epistemologies of the Field

• In Event: Ecologies of Empire I

Abstract

Ground Truth analyzes cartographic production of Iraq’s marshes in the Swiss remote sensing labs of the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP). The science of remote sensing produced real time maps of marshlands terrestrial groundcover from NASA satellite diagnostics that enabled scientists to evaluate how much of the newly reflooded marshes would regenerate and to what extent its vegetation could sustain ecological life. Unlike imperial mapping projects, which advanced and sustained British and French empires in the Middle East, UNEP Geneva lab-based adaptations of remote sensing to the 21st century Iraq war involved no ground verification, a process called “ground truthing.” These purely lab-based diagnostics created a virtual reality of the wetlands that UN scientists and Kubra’s organization relied on to develop Iraq’s conservation policy. I argue the process of producing the marshes as virtual space was a form of violence borne by Iraqi scientists who trained on the technology as they were pushed into increasing levels of territorial abstraction while the war demolished cultural landmarks, bridges, buildings, and markets that made the material geography of Baghdad.

Author

• Bridget Guarasci, Franklin and Marshall College