Ge🌏-HEAL

Dr. Pritam Chand is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography, School of Environment and Earth Sciences, at Central University of Punjab, Bathinda, India. He leads the Geo: Human-Environment Analysis Laboratory (Ge🌏-HEAL), devoted to advancing Geography’s central pursuit of unravelling the intricate interconnections among Climate (Environment), Landscapes (Space), and Societies (People). As a Geographer, Dr Chand foregrounds the discipline’s distinctive integrative nature, its ability to bridge the natural and social sciences, to address a fundamental question: “How do humans (or societies) adapt to, transform, and simultaneously become shaped by their environments across space and time?” through exploring the following interlinked research themes:

• Climate Change Implications and Societal Resilience: Deciphering how glacial dynamics, climate variability, and extreme events across varying temporal scales shape landscapes and livelihoods, and how societies adapt with resilience.  

• Disaster Risk, Vulnerability, and Adaptation: Assessing climate-driven hazards, compounded by human interventions in the Anthropocene, to develop risk-informed adaptation strategies for vulnerable communities, particularly in mountains and their downstream regions.

• Human-Environmental Sustainability in Emerging Landscapes: Investigating how societies and environment (or ecosystem) co-evolve in rapidly transforming landscapes, promoting sustainable resource use, environmental conservation, and adaptive governance.

To achieve these goals, his lab employs a transdisciplinary approach, integrating Geo-informatics (RS/GIS, UAV Photogrammetry/LiDAR and GeoAI), Geo-statistics (numerical modelling using R & Python), Geo-chronology (OSL, CRN, tree-ring dating), and field-based geophysical (GPR, GNSS, etc.) & participatory survey techniques.

"Ge🌏-HEAL fosters a transdisciplinary approach to address the pressing challenges posed by climate change in high-mountain environments and their downstream regions, and accordingly promotes sustainable practices."