Baeten’s current research explores how past human interventions to the Indiana hydroscape (surface waters and soils) and landscape, such as the draining of wetlands, ditching of rivers for irrigation and the tiling of fields for drainage, have resulted in unforeseen and spatially extensive impacts to water quality and water quantity. Baeten is leading the effort to reconstruct Indiana’s historical environment from European settlement to the present by identifying, digitizing and mapping archival data sources such as maps, settler diaries and government reports.
I am broadly interested in contextualizing the environmental legacies produced from past industrial activity as meaningful cultural heritage. I believe the vast global footprint of contamination, waste, and pollution that has accompanied former industrial activity embodies much more than an environmental problem.
Reseach: Spatial Analysis of Environmental Change