Call Call for Applicants for Applicants Regional Regional training course on training course on Earth Earth Observation Observation Tools ools for for Wetlands Wetlands Ecosystems cosystems Management Management and Valuation and Valuation 18 th to 22 nd APRIL, 2016 NAIROBI, KENYA COURSE COURSE INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION Wetlands play a vital role in storing and purifying water for human use, recharge natural aquifers when they run low, retain nutrients in floodplains, help control flooding and regulate local climate. They are also places of remarkable biological diversity: freshwater wetlands alone are home to four in ten of all the world's species, and one in eight of global animal species. These benefits of Ecosystems are threatened by river regulation, with diversion of water from rivers causing considerable environmental costs, particularly to floodplains and downstream wetlands. This means that there is a need for better management practices to apply the wise use approached in order to conserve the wetlands ecosystems. The earth observation tools are being used to support water resources management process worldwide, as it is capable of providing more knowledge and information which could be of great benefit to decision makers. It is being used for inventorying, monitoring and assessing of wetland ecosystems. Nile Nile Eco Eco-VWU VWU Background Background The project wetlands valuation for wise-Use (Nile-Eco-VWU) is a collaborative research Project of 10 international and regional consortium member institutions. The (Nile-Eco-VWU) is a regional research project that aims to develop and test integrated tools for ecosystems services valuation and assessment that can be applied at local and regional scales ecosystems services valuation and assessment that can be applied at local and regional scales within the Nile Basin. The main focus of the project is on wetlands ecosystems where wetlands are considered the most biologically diverse of all ecosystems. The steady and ongoing decline of wetlands extent and quality of wetlands in the Nile basin will lead to a further net decrease of overall value, unless managed with greater focus taking into account total economic value that includes measurements of direct use, indirect-use and non-use. These aspects are covered in the project by looking at wetlands with a wider ecosystems-services approach that includes assessment of so-called Regulating, Habitat and Cultural Services, as well as direct use Provisioning services. The project includes four pilot areas in the Nile Basin: Mara ecosystem in Tanzania and Kenya, Burullus Northern coastal lake wetlands in Nile Delta of Egypt, Nakivubo wetlands in Uganda and the Blue Nile back swamps and Dinder park in Sudan.. Course Course Objectives Objectives The project is designed to be an integrated capacity development programme focusing on both research and training activities. Therefore, a training programme was designed within this project to build capacity of researchers and practitioners in the field of wetlands ecosystems to use and apply the earth observations tools in the management process. This is the third training course of four training courses are designed to cover the different stages of the project output and to support the participation of the project researchers in addition to participants from all the other basin countries from universities, research centres and wetlands authorities. The specific objectives of the training course are: • Get Better understanding of the earth observations tools and concepts • Be more familiar with using EO as tools for wetland ecosystem management. • How to Map and monitor the wetland ecosystem, • How can EO tools support valuation of wetland ecosystem, • Be familiar with open source EO tools such as QGIS/WOIS