Matthew Bampton

Matthew’s research focuses on climate impacts on marginal communities in the Arctic and Sub-Arctic.  His current project is based in Southern Greenland.  He is working with an interdisciplinary group from USM and the University of Maine Climate Change Institute exploring the long-term relationship between people and the environment in and around the Kujataa UNESCO World Heritage Site, Kujalleq. Previously he worked on an interdisciplinary field project in the Shetland Islands combining archeology, geology and GIS to analyze the destruction of a farming community, described here. The core analysis for this work was undertaken in academic year 2014-15 when Matthew was appointed as Fulbright Visiting Professor at the University of Edinburgh in the Institute for the Advanced Study of the Humanities. 

His other research interests include GIS education for undergraduates, and developing models for geospatial technology education in a rural region. This work is a collaborative effort, and involves faculty from all seven UMaine System campuses.

For over a decade he worked on a long-term NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates Program with Mark Swanson of USM’s Geosciences program.  He has also worked with the Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital, and Maine Medical Center Research on the National Children’s Study: a multi-year study to examine the effects of environmental influences on the health and development of more than 100,000 children across the United States, following them from before birth until age 21.  In the past he has studied human impacts on northern New England landscapes during the Colonial period, he has worked with archaeologists from the Thor Heyerdahl museum mapping Moai on Rapa Nui (Easter Island), and he has collaborated with USM Archaeologist to map Native American sites in coastal Maine.  Other collaborations include analyzing human rights crises and massacres in Guatemala, seal strandings in the Gulf of Maine, and the geography of obesity.