October 1, 2021
We have archives of films, newspapers, even seeds -- what if we could make one for the entire surface of the earth? Changes to the Earth’s biosphere have reached a critical mass and it is now clear that we can no longer halt these that are resulting from human induced earth system modifications. The resulting climate crisis coupled with human population growth and land use changes are fundamentally altering our planet and as a result we have a limited time to record the Earth’s surface and the distribution of biota. Here we call for a massive international effort to 3-D scan the entire land mass of the planet (29.2%) to create a digital Earth Archive to provide a comprehensive baseline database of the Earth’s surface, and everything on it, at a high resolution that is accessible to as many as possible. Drawing on his experience mapping an ancient city in the Honduran jungle, archaeologist Chris Fisher makes the case for scanning the whole planet with LiDAR -- a technology that uses lasers shot from an airplane to map the ground -- in order to preserve our cultural and ecological heritage.
Christopher T. Fisher, PhD, is an archaeologist, professor of anthropology at Colorado State University, and the founder of the Earth Archive. Dr. Fisher’s research has centered on unraveling the complex set of social and environmental variables that resulted in the formation of the Late Postclassic (CE 1350-1520) Purépecha (Tarascan) Empire located in the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin, Michoacán, Mexico. During the course of this work in 2007, he and his team first documented an ancient city which they now call Angamuco, which has been investigated using both traditional archaeological techniques coupled with airborne LiDAR. In 2012, a pair of documentary filmmakers (Steve Elkins and Bill Benenson) contacted Fisher and his team to see if they could better analyze newly acquired LiDAR for the Mosquitia region of Honduras. Ground verification of one of these settlements in 2015, now called the City of the Jaguar, resulted in the discovery of a cache of artifacts left at the center of the city as an offering when the city was abandoned. This expedition was covered in the October 2015 issue of National Geographic and is covered in the book Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story. In 2016, with the support of National Geographic and the Honduran Government Chris returned to the City of the Jaguar for a month of excavation and conservation. Recent work has focused on building a three dimensional record of the entire planet called the Earth Archive.
His work appears in many professional venues including edited volumes, such as Seeking a Richer Harvest: An Introduction to the Archaeology of Subsistence Intensification, Innovation, and Change, The Archaeology of Environmental Change: Socionatural Legacies of Degradation and Resilience and journals such as the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Anthropologist. In addition his work has appeared in popular publications such as the New Yorker, National Geographic, and many other sources.
Fisher has conducted fieldwork and directed projects in several areas of the United States, Mexico, Honduras, Portugal, and Albania. His work is supported by the National Science Foundation, National Geographic, the Heinz Foundation, and private sources. In 2007 Fisher received the Gordon R. Willey Award from the American Anthropological Association. He earned a BA from Michigan State University and an MA and PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.