Digitally-Enabled Uplands Research: Review, Critique and Future Principles for Use of Digital in Research on Hill and Mountain Regions

Digitally-enabled uplands research – the use of new digital datasets, techniques and technologies to investigate hill and mountain areas – is on the rise. This paper reviews this use within a bounded body of literature that is dominated by scientific research. While acknowledging the value that digital can bring to research, it draws out two main implications.

First, the research contributes to a “rendering technical” of uplands. Uplands problems are framed and solved in technical terms. An a-theoretical scientific datafication removes depth and detail from the true complexity of uplands, and breaches supposed objectivity by making decisions about what knowledge to include and exclude, and about what to render visible and invisible. One impact is a de-humanisation of the uplands in which uplands stakeholders are not represented or involved in any part of the research process.

Second, the research is a form of “adverse digital incorporation” in which data is extracted to the sole observable benefit of researchers who come to speak on behalf of uplands. The paper ends by drawing out some principles for future research, presented in the form of a checklist of questions that researchers on hill and mountain regions could apply to their projects.