Land Degradation Monitoring Project Concludes

The workshop was part of GEF-Land Degradation Monitoring Project capacity building efforts for Kenya. The project is funded by Global Environment Facility (GEF) and provides guidance on robust methods and a toolbox for assessing, monitoring status, and estimating trends in land degradation using remote sensing technology.

The project is piloting products and tools in four countries (Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and Senegal) through a partnership between Lund University in Sweden, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) of the United States, and Vital Signs. The project’s goal is to provide tools and data products to support countries in their reporting to both the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and the GEF.

As part of this, it is crucial that the methods and guidance as well as the workings of this project’s toolbox be disseminated. Thus, this will help create an open data platform with tools and data products that will be available as a global public good. The GEF-Land Degradation Monitoring Project has three major components:

• Establishing methods for assessing and monitoring the status and trends of land degradation;
• Demonstrating recommended methods and platforms that will enable widespread adoption of standardized methods and tools;
• Developing gender appropriate capacity to use the toolbox and recommended approaches for assessing the status and trends of land degradation using remote sensing.

The purpose of this workshop was to provide training to key stakeholders from government, academia, private sector and CSO’s, on the project’s products as well as the trends.earth toolbox. There were 32 participants from various institutions including RCMRD, Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (MENR), Kenya Forest Service (KFS), NEMA, Kenyatta University, Kenya Meteorological Department (KMD), Department of Resource Surveys and Remote Sensing (DRSRS).

The course facilitators were from Conservation International (Tristan Schnader, Dr. Peter Alele, Dr. Alex Zvoleff, Monica Noon, and Dr. Mariano Gonzalez-Roglich), Lund University (Dr. Genesis Yengoh), Osilalei Limited (Dr. Jeff Worden).

For more information, visit: http://www.vitalsigns.org/gef-ldmp/project-description-and-timeline