RCMRD/SERVIR-Eastern and Southern Africa water quality workshop
Lake Victoria is the second largest freshwater lake in the world and has the world’s largest freshwater fishery. The lake basin supports about 30 million people and is the source of the Nile River. Threats facing the lake include eutrophication, over-exploitation of fisheries, introduced exotic species, and climate change.
The Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for Development (RCMRD)/SERVIR-Eastern and Southern Africa (E&SA) is using remotely sensed satellite data for lake water quality monitoring and land use-land cover changes with a focus on Lake Victoria and Lake Malawi. As part of this project, a workshop was held at RCMRD in Nairobi from 18 to 22 May 2015, about basic skills needed to work with satellite remote sensing data for water quality assessments. Instruction was included in the use of SeaDAS to convert satellite data indicative of water quality into visual products that can help end users evaluate water quality. SeaDAS is a comprehensive image analysis package for the processing, display, analysis, and quality control of ocean color data.
Dr. Robinson Mugo, the SERVIR-E&SA Earth Observation Lead, led the training, which was attended by 21 participants, including meteorologists, scientists, environmental experts, water quality officers, fisheries personnel, professors, and students from Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Malawi, and Tanzania. “The session was very interesting and core to automate my scripts,” says Dismas Karuranga, Water Quality Officer at Rwanda Natural Resources Authority. “Back home I want to use the knowledge acquired here in Water Quality activity, mainly monitoring of water hyacinth and chlorophyll in our water bodies and tracking the sediment sources into our rivers.”
Sixteen institutions were represented at the workshop including Kenya Marine & Fisheries Research Institute, Kenya Meteorological Service, Fisheries Research unit of Malawi, Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Irrigation of Malawi, Rwanda Natural Resource Authority, Tanzania Fisheries Research Institute, Institute of Resource Assessment of Tanzania, National Fisheries Resources Research Institute of Uganda, Lake Victoria Fisheries Organization, Busitema University, Kenya Marine & Fisheries Research Institute, Malawi Polytechnic, South Eastern Kenya University, University of Dar es Salaam, University of Makerere, University of Malawi, and University of Rwanda.
The event was a follow-up to a March 2015 user engagement workshop that focused on information sharing and identification of regional challenges.