MundoGEO, a leading media company in Latin America in the geospatial industry, will be media partner of the Global Geospatial Conference 2013
The AfriGEOSS initiative launch will take place at the combined GSDI 14 World Conference and AfricaGIS 2013 Conference to be held at the UN Conference Centre of UNECA on 4-8 November. The launch plenary session is on Tuesday, 4 November, to be followed by an official reception. RMCRD and UNECA are both valued members of the GSDI Association, as well as hosts (UNECA) and lead collaborators (RMCRD) for the combined conference, and GEO are Conference Gold Sponsors.
Barbara Ryan, Secretariat Director of GEO, is one of the Conference Keynote speakers and will be focusing on GEO’s AfriGEOSS initiative, which seeks to identify the challenges, and to put in place measures, to enhance Africa’s participation in, and contribution to, GEOSS.
The International Symposium on Land Cover Mapping for the African Continent, hosted by the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) and the Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for Development (RCMRD), with support from the United States Department of the Interior, Tsinghua University and the joint USAID/NASA SERVIR program, took place in Nairobi, Kenya on June 25-27, 2013.
The Symposium brought together a diverse group of participants from four continents (Africa, America, Europe, and Asia). Participants were from governments, academia, and NGOS representatives from nineteen African countries, including regional entities.
The major objectives of this three-day event were to share ongoing technical collaboration, data availability, capacity building successes, and to increase communication between and among the various stakeholders.
Land-cover data are some of the most important inputs for weather forecasting, human and ecosystem health, climate change, agricultural sustainability, management of water, forest and other natural resources, land use planning, reducing land degradation, conservation of biodiversity, and renewable energy assessment. Information on land-cover change trends provides significant value to both the scientific community and the general public. Therefore, land-cover information plays a critical role in supporting policy and decision-making at local, regional, continental and global levels.
Mapping Africa’s land cover has been facilitated by the availability of free and open data from the US Landsat program and data processing/analysis capabilities in African regional centres (e.g. RCMRD) and partner countries (e.g. China, US, EU). These data and processing capabilities have led to the creation of a new continent-wide map for the year 2010, continent-wide samples documenting land cover change between the 1990-2000-2010 epochs, regional maps for 2000 and 2010, regional validation datasets, and selected national and project scale mapping for specific tasks such as agriculture, forestry and other land use (AFOLU) carbon accounting.
However, in several countries data gaps, inadequate institutional frameworks, missing networks of experts and technological barriers mean that the specific needs of policy makers cannot always be met. Eight key recommendations were made by symposium participants to advance Land Cover mapping for the African Continent. The Final Report of the Symposium is being completed and will be available soon. A further meeting of the working group is being planned to be held during the conference.
Learn the latest news on AfriGEOSS at the Global Geospatial Conference 2013 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on 4 November 2013.
