Environmental Management Tools
Woods Hole Research Center
IAGT is working with the Woods Hole Research Center (WHRC) to provide geospatial technology and software design, development, implementation and training services in support of the WHRC Africa Program dedicated to monitoring habitat alteration, supporting biodiversity conservation, and promoting better land use planning and forest management in Central Africa. To accomplish this, WHRC seeks to create a monitoring system that combines NASA satellite imagery with field observations from forest inventories, wildlife surveys, and socioeconomic studies to create information that can be used by resource managers to map and monitor forest habitat, including encroachment of protected park lands.
In particular, IAGT has developed a custom Web Mapping Application for the Protected Area Watch for the Albertine Rift (PAWAR) program. This application enables PAWAR stakeholders involved in analysis and decision-making for conservation management to visualize, interact with, and download a range of remote sensing, base map, and thematic geospatial data layers including land cover change, burn extents, poaching activity, etc. The application encompasses a number of key protected areas in the country of Uganda, and is anticipated to expand to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and potentially to other countries in the region as well.
This project was featured in a recent Arc News article (Winter 2009/2010). Click here to read the article.