Historic Vegetation Mapping - The Missouri Original GLO Survey Notes Project featured in the April 2002 Edition of National Geographic. See http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0204/feature5/index.html for more.

"Lewis and Clark's Lost Missouri
A geographer maps the explorers’ true path into the West—unsettling some towns’claims to fame."
(National Geographic, April 2002)

The Lewis and Clark Historic Landscape Project is well underway and has been featured in the April Issue of National Geographic. The project originally began in 1993 as the Historic Vegetation Mapping - The Missouri Original GLO Survey Notes Project. The Geographic Resources Center began by building datasets for test regions of Missouri as well as investigating and testing different methodologies for analyzing and interpreting the data provided by the original GLO survey notes. The techniques for interpreting the GLO notes and entering the data into ArcInfo were originally developed by MU Grad Student Shannon Porter as part of a Geography Masters thesis under the guidance of MU Geography Professor Dr. Walter Schroeder. The interpretation of the GLO surveyors notes and data entry techniques have been extensively revised and expanded by MU Geographer Jim Harlan including the in depth study of the journals of Lewis and Clarks Corps of Discovery.

Over the past two years a major effort has been underway to complete the reconstruction of a corridor across the State of Missouri following the course of the Missouri River as part of Missouri’s contribution to the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial celebration. Essentially, the physical and floral landscape is being virtually recreated as it would have been at the time of the GLO survey. The GLO survey of the Missouri River corridor was completed between 1815 and 1819, hence the reconstruction created by Harlan's team is a close a representation of the landscape as Lewis and Clark would have seen it. The laborious task of entering interpreting and entering data has and is being undertaken by a team of undergrad and graduate geography student employees of the GRC under the close supervision of Jim Harlan. Funding for the project is provided by the Missouri State Archives, the Missouri Secretary of States Office and from a substantial grant awarded to Harlan from the National Endowment for the Humanities.