Topics
The 8th Summer School aims to introduce innovative methods and tools for the analysis and monitoring of water and land resources in Central Asia. After the completion of the Summer School students are expected to understand how climate change affects political, socio-economic and environmental conditions in Central Asia and how to link scientific results to policymaking as a solution proposal to water challenges in Central Asia
During the 10 days of Summer School, we will combine theoretical lectures and practical exercises with discussion sessions on the implementation of new methods and tools for managing water and land resources in Central Asia. The programme will include an in-depth introduction to geographical information systems (GIS), an overview of remote sensing applications for land and water resources monitoring, an introduction to climatological data analysis, and an introduction to GRACE satellite missions, as well as basics of writing policy briefs. For the practical exercises in data analysis, the participants will use open source tools such as QGIS (www.qgis.org) for spatial analysis, and R (www.r-project.org) for statistical analysis. For the final presentation, participants are expected to draft a policy brief proposal, based on the scientific results from the practical exercises. Two days of the Summer School are reserved for a field trip around Almaty.
The Summer School is organized within the frame of the CAWa-Green project as a contribution to the Part of the Green Central Asia Initiative launched by the German Federal Foreign Office.
Programme details will be published on the CAWa Green Project www.cawa-project.net website in due time.
Participation
The Summer School addresses dedicated young professionals and students with an interest in geoscientific tools for Integrated Water and Land Resources Management and its practical implementation in policymaking. Eligible are participants from the following Central Asian countries: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, as well as Afghan students currently residing only in Kazakhstan.
Participants will be selected based on their application documents (motivation letter, CV).