UAF RESEARCHERS ASSESS BOSNIAN WAR DAMAGE IN REPORT TO UNITED NATIONS

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 22, 1996

Fairbanks, Alaska - Using satellite data and high-speed computing, two University of Alaska Fairbanks professors are compiling a comprehensive damage assessment of the former Yugoslavia on behalf of the United Nations.

Associate Professor Harry Bader, along with graduate student Jonathan Andrews, completed site-ground referencing in Bosnia - Hercegovina and Croatia from November through December 1995.

The two men photographed and obtained exact coordinates for sites while driving throughout both countries in an armored Land Rover mounted with a Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) antenna. The sites represent various forms of damage and disturbance to natural resources, villages and cities, and economic infrastructure.

UAF Associate Professor David Verbyla will use the data collected by Bader and Andrews to analyze infrared imaging of the former Yugoslavia obtained from civilian satellites. The analysis, performed at UAF's School of Agriculture and Land Resources Management Remote Sensing - Geographical Information Systems (GIS) laboratory, will involve imaging Bosnia and Croatia along 30 meter grid cells every 16 days from 1991 through 1996.

According to Bader, the information developed by this damage assessment

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project will be used by the United Nations to plan environmental reclamation and economic reconstruction in the former Yugoslavia.

Bader also says the information will be used by the U.N. High Commission for Refugees to help plan the repatriation or relocation of displaced persons resulting from the war, and by the U.N. International War Tribunal to identify sites of suspected war crimes for the purpose of prosecution.

Bader and Verbyla are scheduled to present a free, public seminar addressing the comprehensive damage assessment of the former Yugoslavia Jan. 31, 7:30 p.m. at UAF's Natural Sciences Building Pearl Berry Boyd Hall.

Bader is an associate professor of Natural Resources and Environmental Law at UAF. He has served as a war crimes and human rights investigator providing information to the United Nations in Bosnia and in Croatia in 1992 and in 1993, at which time he was arrested, jailed, and expelled by Bosnian Serb authorities. He has also worked as a human rights investigator in El Salvador and in Nicaragua.

Verbyla, an associate professor of Geographic Information Systems at UAF, is considered one of the nation's leading academic researchers in the field of applying remote sensing technology to ecosystem study and management. He is the director of the Remote Sensing GIS Laboratory operated by UAF's School of Agriculture and Land Resources Management, and is the author of the recently published textbook "Satellite Remote Sensing of Natural Resources."

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CONTACT: Associate Professor of Natural Resources and Environmental Law Harry Bader (907) 474-6521, Associate Professor of Geographic Information Systems David Verbyla,(907) 474-5553, or UAF's Resources Management Department, (907) 474-5550.

DPD/1-22-96/96-45