ArcGis Training 2
The Wildlife Conservation Society Congo Program is promoting training and capacity building as a powerful tool to effectively manage Congo’s protected areas and buffer zones through increased monitoring and protection. In the last few decades there has been a tremendous increase in both the level of threats and management effort, which has exacerbated the need for a strong management tool such as GIS-based system able to incorporate spatial and biological components with human factors and provide a basis for planning and informing management strategies.
As with many other training courses and workshops, this year’s GIS training course was held in Bomassa, headquarters of Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park in northern Congo. Two volunteer trainers, Patrick Lola Amani and Eddy Bongwende, came from the Observatoire Satelital des Forêts d’Afrique Centrale (OSFAC). The two-week training course ran from April 25th to May 7th 2008 and was attended by 22 participants from the WCS-Congo site-based projects, as well as partners from the Ministère de l’Economie Forestière (MEF) and the Congolaise Industrielle de Bois (CIB ).
The training course was coordinated by Roger Patrick Boundja as part of the USFWS Training and Capacity Building Fund for Great Apes Conservation in Central Africa, which partly funded the course. The course was divided in two main sessions of approximately seven days each. Participants with some GIS background refreshed their skills during the first training session, while those without a GIS background learned the basics of GIS using ArcView 3.2. Participants were taught the different types of data used in GIS, data structure in ArcView, creating and managing a GIS project in ArcView, producing spatial data and using information from ecological and socio-economic survey data using ArcView and Excel, as well as producing maps.
The last training session involved some advanced techniques of GIS and the use of ArcGIS 9.x. Here participants were taught some spatial analysis, such as interpolation of gorilla or elephant densities from transect survey data and image processing, geo-processing and geo-referencing and the use of ArcGIS interfaces such as ArcMap, Arc Catalog and Arc Toolbox, some of the most powerful GIS software packages currently available.
As part of its Training and Capacity Building program, WCS-Congo has received a grant from ESRI Conservation Program www.esri.com/conservation for 16 new ArcGIS 9.2 and Spatial Analyst permanent licenses and an update to ArcGIS 9.3. Both training courses and the grant from ESRI are an important boost to the WCS-Congo site-based projects’ management of Congo’s protected areas and their buffer zones.