Woods Hole Research Center

Rwanda - June 21st-24th, 2011

From June 20 through June 25, 2011, the Woods Hole Research Center staff held a workshop in Kigali and Ruhengeri, Rwanda, on methods for biomass estimation and forest cover mapping in the tropics. The five-day workshop brought together policy and technical officers from Africa and countries around the world. The policy workshop was attended by over sixty-eight participants including thirty-two from Rwanda.

The workshop began with a one day national policy workshop in Kigali on forest monitoring tools and techniques and their increasing importance in policies for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD). It continued in Ruhengeri with a smaller training workshop for technical staff focused on combining remote sensing and field based forest inventory methods to derive carbon maps. Thirty-two international participants in total including 7 Rwandan technicians from government, NGOs, and academic institutions had the opportunity to receive this advanced technical training.

The workshop featured several presentations on forest and carbon monitoring in the tropics and Africa given by the participants. It also included computer training in the generation of biomass maps integrating field measurements and remotely sensed data, computer training on forest/non-forest mapping, the use of free and open-source software and commercial GIS software (ESRI) for forest biomass estimation, data set options for producing carbon maps, and discussions of forest mapping in the context of REDD and other forest carbon financing opportunities in tropical regions.

Funding and support were provided by the following institutions:

National Forest Authority, Rwanda Development Board, Rwandan Environmental Management Authority, Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International, The David & Lucile Packard Foundation, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and Google.org.