Dr. John Lowry, Dr. Eberhard Weber and Mr. Conway Pene

With funding from the United States Embassy in Suva, Pacific Island Fund for Small Development Grants

The goal of the Geo/Earthcaching Programme is to enhance awareness of environmental change in the Pacific Region through student research. The University of the South Pacific attracts students from all over the Pacific Region and abroad. Our students study climate change, physical and human geography, sustainable development, land management, and a variety of other important topics about the environment through coursework, fieldtrips and textbooks. The Geo/Earthcache programme encourages students to reflect on what they learn at USP in the context of their home countries, towns and villages. Student projects are exploratory studies of how the physical and social environment is changing in specific, often remote, locations around the Pacific. For each of these studies, students collect primary data about environmental change through interviews (audio and script), photographs and GPS data. We borrow the idea of making our research sites “geo” or “earth”-cache sites from the activity many are engaged in throughout the world of posting the latitude/longitude coordinates of a particular geographic location to the world wide web for others to find (i.e. geocaching). Through this media we hope people from around the globe will become better informed of the environmental changes occurring in the cities, villages, and islands of many who live in this part of the world.

To view student Geo/Earthcache webpages click thumb-tack on map or link below map.

View Geo/Earthcaching Sites 2010-2011 in a larger map