Woods Hole Research Center

Each year, as part of the pantropical mapping project, a select group of scholars from across the tropics gather at the Woods Hole Research Center to expand their skills in forest measurement and monitoring techniques through intensive training with WHRC scientists. While each of the participants has specific technical and personal objectives, they all share the common goal of slowing tropical deforestation in order to reduce carbon emissions and preserve their forests for future generations. This year, we have 15 scholars from 12 countries: Bolivia, Colombia, Gabon, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Laos, Malawi, Mexico, Uganda, Vietnam, and Zambia.

The technical sessions are aimed at providing methodologies for measuring and monitoring forest carbon, thereby providing countries with the confidence and technical autonomy necessary to administer successful forest carbon projects. Session topics include “Mapping Forest Cover Change,” “Estimating Carbon Emissions,” and “Modeling Land Use and Cover Change (Future Scenarios Modeling).” Along with the advanced technical sessions, this year we have also incorporated leadership training and workshop module development to help the participants plan and implement what they have learned once they return to their home countries. We want to expand our reach by transforming the students into teachers, giving them the confidence and technical expertise they need to be effective leaders when they return home.

The Participants

Virni Budi Aifanti	Mrs. Arifanti is a remote sensing scientist at Research Center for Climate Change and Forest Policy, Ministry of Forestry of Indonesia. Her research interests focus on monitoring land cover, land cover change, forest carbon, landscape analysis, and adaptation strategies of forest communities to climate change at several ecosystems. She holds her Bachelor degree in Forest Management from Bogor Agricultural Institute in Bogor, Indonesia, and her MSc in Forestry majoring Spatial Information Techniques in Ghent University, Belgium. Before joining the Ministry of Forestry, she worked at Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) in Bogor, Indonesia, the European Union for Forest Inventory and Monitoring Project in Jakarta, and PT. Surveyor Indonesia in Jakarta, Indonesia.
Eric Armijo	Mr. Armijo, land change analyst at FAN-Bolivia, is interested in the use of geospatial techniques to characterize and model land use an land change processes in tropical regions of Bolivia, South America. He is currently in charge of building deforestation baselines for a REDD program in the Bolivian Amazon. Mr. Armijo holds a B.S. in computer science from UPSA University in Bolivia and a M.A. in geography from the University of Maryland, College Park (US).
Mike Chirwa	Mike Chirwa works for Forestry Research Institute of Malawi (FRIM), Malawi, as a resource monitoring officer. He is currently working on various programs within Malawi, one of which is Lake Chilwa Basin Climate Change Adaptation Programme (LCBCCAP) in Southern Malawi where his responsibility is to monitor forest cover, biomass, and carbon stock change. He has also been engaged in in-country simulation and piloting of carbon financing programmes such as REDD (e.g Nkuwazi in Northern Malawi). In his MSc., he looked at an important multi-purpose fruit tree species in Southern Africa, Uapaca kirkiana, some its provenances and families, and their potential to sequester carbon. His research areas of interest include allometry, policy-resource scenario simulation and land cover change.
Paola Giraldo	Ms. Giraldo is Forest Engineer whose interestes focus on the use of remote sensing for the mapping of land cover, land cover change, multitemporal analyse, and zonification of protected areas applying multicriteria analyses. She has been working at the Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Enviromental Studies, Colombia since June 2010 and before She worked on land cover classification for natural strategic areas in some of the Natura Fundation – Colombia projects.
Andreana Paola Mekui Biyogo	Ms. Mekui Biyogo works currently like research officer in charge of REDD+ and CDM at Forest department in Gabon. With a degree in forest sciences from ENEF, a Diploma in Geomatics from Omar Bongo University and a Master degree in remote sensing of forest resources from University of Moncton. She is Forest Engineer, specialist of remote sensing (small-footprint airborne LIDAR, Optical). She used to work with WWF, for several years like GIS Officer of the Minkebe program. Her last position at WWF has been the Regional Coordinator of the first pilot project of community forestry in her country (Gabon). Ms. Mekui Biyogo does consulting from time to time with FAO and WHRC, respectively by managing human-wildlife conflict and being part of the team of trainers for field measurements protocol on aboveground biomass data collection and carbon stock estimation.
Giang Nguyen Vu	Mr. Nguyen Vu is a researcher in Department of Remote Sensing Technology, GIS and GPS, at Space Technology Institute (STI) in Vietnam. He is responsible for developing applications of remote sensing and GIS for investigation, monitoring and management of sustainable use of natural resources. He has been working as technical consultant for NGOs such as Asian Development Bank (ADB), International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and Netherlands Development Organization (SNV) where he carried capacity building trainings on land use planning and rural livelihood development; creating land use, land cover maps; and forest cover change analysis. Giang’s interests are in modeling land use and land cover change, estimating biomass, and creating emission maps from multi-sources remote sensing data. He also would like to develop his research on urbanization, importance of open spaces in urban and their effects on land surface temperature pattern.
Grace Nangendo	Dr. Nangendo graduated from Makerere University, Uganda, with a bachelor degree in Forestry, from the International Institute for Geo-information Science and earth observation (ITC), the Netherlands, with a Master of Science degree in Geo-information for Forest and Tree Resource Management and, Wageningen University and ITC, the Netherlands, with a Doctorate of Philosophy focusing on conservation of forest-woodland-savannah mosaics. Grace has experience in the geospatial industry and in natural resource management. Her interest is in applying a spatial component to forest dynamics and to other natural resources, in biodiversity and plant ecology, and in local people’s use of forest resources. She has worked with WCS since June 2006 as the Geographical Information Systems (GIS) Manager.
Peter Ndunda	Mr. Ndunda is the Geographical Information Systems (GIS) Specialist at the Green Belt Movement. He directs the activities of a GIS lab for the Green Belt Movement to support the re-afforestation, climate change and community development efforts in Kenya. In addition, he manages the measurement and monitoring activities of the Green Belt Movement’s community carbon projects in Kenya. He is a member of the Carbon Measurement Collaborative team that is coordinated by the Clinton Climate Iniative to support the development of National Carbon Accounting System (NCAS) in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, among other countries. Prior to his position at the Green Belt Movement, Peter worked as a GeoInformation Consultant with the WorldBank in Washington DC. He is a graduate of Moi University, Kenya, and the University of Redlands, CA.
Akchousanh Rasphone	Ms. Rasphone is a GIS/Spatial Landscape Ecologist interested in carbon and forest cover/change mapping and species habitat distribution modeling. Ms. Rasphone received her Bachelor of Technology in GIS from the University of Southern Queensland (Australia) and her M.S. in Geographical Science from the Australian National University. Ms. Rasphone is currently working with the Wildlife Conservation Society Lao PDR on a biodiversity conservation project in the southern landscape of Laos as a project coordinator and GIS/Spatial Landscape Ecologist.
Abel Siampale	Mr. Siampale is a Forester with solid skills in Forest Resource Assessments (Forest Inventories and GIS), currently working for the Forestry Department, Ministry of Tourism, Environment and Natural Resources in Zambia. His interests focus mainly on sustainability and vulnerability assessments, forestry mapping, land use and land cover change with 17 years of experience in using GIS. Before becoming a scholar with woods hole research center (WHRC), he served as a National Consultant in Zambia for the integrated land-use assessment (ILUA) project under FAO and helped generate the current deforestation rate (map) for Zambia. Holds an undergraduate diploma in forestry management, and postgraduate qualification in Geo-informatics.
Mukund Srivastava	Mr. Srivastava a professional forester and a member of the Indian Forest Service (IFS). He has nearly 21 years of field experience working in various capacities including Chief Conservator of Forests (Environment). He currently works as Joint Director, Forest Survey of India and Head of National Forest Data Management Centre at FSI Head Quarters at Dehradun, India. He received his Masters in Physics from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur and Master of Technology (M.Tech) in RS and GIS from the Indian Institute of Remote Sensing, Dehradun, India. He has published papers on Forest Productivity and Forest Fire Monitoring using RS and has wide experience in public participation in forest management. He is a member of a number of Government of India committees and Technical Advisory Committees of provinces. He is taking special initiatives to factor in the latest technical interventions to improve forest cover mapping and biomass mapping.
Edward Ssenyonjo	Mr. Ssenyonjo is a Forester by profession with a Bachelor of Science in Forestry from Makerere University, Kampala. In 2004 Edward joined the National Forestry Authority (NFA) as the Remote Sensing Specialist and is currently working there. His main tasks are to produce periodic national land cover/use wall to wall maps of Uganda and other related products. He has 7 years of work experience working with the Geographical Information Systems (GIS) for contributing to information used by decision makers at NFA and in the Ministry of Water and Environment. He is currently involved in the baseline mapping of the Uganda Nile Basin Reforestation Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) project areas North Rwenzori and Kasagala central forest reserve in Rwoho . He recently concluded the verification of planted areas and crop status in Rwoho central forest reserve CDM project area.
Isabel Trejo	Ms. Trejo is a biologist, working in CONABIO (National Commission for the Use and Knowledge of Biodiversity), in a project called Bio-Decision Support System (SSD), which seeks to create a software to perform environmental impact analysis and can be used by individuals and/or institutions that require guidance on the environmental impact would the construction of any infrastructure. She is currently developing ways to measure the impact of a pipeline that runs from Colima to Guadalajara. The goal is to develop tools for the continued use of the system. She is personally interested in achieving her degree in multi-scale distribution of species to provide a tool of the potential distribution of the same while using this tool in order for the SSD to get future scenarios of the impact on the species.
Diana Vargas	Ms. Vargas is an agricultural engineer with postgraduate studies in environmental impact assessment, MsC in environment and management of biodiversity. She has professional experience in geographic information systems and use of remote sensing for monitoring natural resources, with emphasis on the analysis of land cover. She is an expert in climate change, especially in issues related to accounting of emissions from land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF) and the REDD mechanism. She is currently involved in the  project "Building Technical  and Scientific Capacity to support REDD Projects in Colombia" in IDEAM, as part of the working team developing and implementing  protocols for digital processing of satellite images for the quantification of deforestation.
Sitwala Wamunyima	Mr. Wamunyima received a Master of Science Degree in Geoinformation Science and Earth Observation - Natural Resources Management specializing in Environmental Systems Analysis and Management followed by studies at ITC, The Netherlands. He has built his career in the field of forest resources management since 1995 when he joined the Forestry Department, one of the government departments in the Ministry of Tourism, Environment and Natural Resources in Zambia. He still serves in the Forestry Department and is involved in forest inventories, application of remote sensing for forest monitoring, and large scale mapping. He also contributes to the decision pool for the Forestry Department on aspects of budgeting, strategic planning, and policy direction.

 

Home page group photo courtesy of Tad Ryan.