Protected AreA WAtch for the Albertine rift

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The Woods Hole Research CenterFalmouth, Massachusetts 02540

whrc.org

NadiNe T. LaporTe, ph.d., is the director of the Center’s Africa Program. A biologist, her research focuses on the applications of satellite imagery to tropical forest ecosystems, including vegetation mapping, land-use change, and deforestation. She has been involved in numerous environmental projects in Africa over the past 20 years, working with in-country scientists, forest-ers, and international conservation organizations to develop integrated forest monitoring systems and promote forest conservation. She received her doc-torate in tropical biogeography from l’Université Paul Sabatier in Toulouse, France.

The Woods hoLe research ceNTer is dedicated to science, education and public policy for a habitable Earth, seeking to conserve and sustain forests, soils, water, and energy by demonstrating their value to human well-being and economic prosperity. The Center has initiatives in the Amazon, the Arc-tic, Africa, Asia, Russia, Boreal North America, the Mid-Atlantic, and New England including Cape Cod. Center programs focus on the global carbon cycle, forest function, landcover/land use, water cycles and chemicals in the environment, science in public affairs, and education, providing primary data and enabling better appraisals of the trends in forests.

ackNoWLedgemeNTs: This project is funded by the NASA Applications Program - Ecological Forecasting - Biodiversity (Woody Turner) with addi-tional funds provided by the National Science Foundation Human and Social Dynamics program (Saran Twombly and Thomas Baerwald), and USAID.

Stretching from the northern end of Lake Albert to the south-ern end of Lake Tanganyika, the Albertine Rift is one of Africa’s most important and most threatened sites for biodiversity conservation. Spanning 312,000 km2, the rift is home to more than 7,500 species of endemic plants and animals. The region is also one of the most populous in Africa, with up to 600 people per square kilometer in some lo-cations. In addition to the pres-sures of population density, an influx of refugees and the lack of settlement policies have com-pounded the problems of forest degradation, fragmentation, and loss, particularly in protected areas. The current network of protected areas within the rift covers some 52,000 km2 (17%), evenly split between national parks (beige) and forest/wildlife reserves (green).

The Protected Area Watch for the Albertine Rift (PAWAR) endeavors to promote the development and use of remote sensing-derived information in conservation policy analysis and to encourage dialogue on leading environ-mental and development concerns in the Albertine Rift region.

For more information on the PAWAR project, please contact Nadine Laporte at nlaporte@whrc.org

©

The Woods Hole Research CenterFalmouth, Massachusetts 02540

whrc.org

acTiviTies: Project activities include the integration of remote sensing analysis into existing decision support systems, the production of base maps of land use/land cover, deforestation, forest carbon distribution, fires, and the development of monitoring tools that combine remote sensing and biodiver-sity data. The intent is to improve natural resources management, distribut-ing spatial information supporting conservation policy analysis and providing technical training to support the long-term use of spatial data and analyses for climate, forests, and biodiversity.

Protected Area Watch for the Albertine Rift

audieNce: The primary audience is African technicians, decision-makers and donor agencies involved in environmental planning and natural resources management. The results are intended to support the analytical agenda of the Albertine conservation network such as the Albertine Rift Conservation Society (ARCOS). The core group includes the Wildlife Conservation So-ciety (WCS) Albertine Rift Programme; the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Albertine Rift Mountain Forests Ecoregion Project; the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI); the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Central African Regional Program for the Environment (CARPE); the National For-est Authority (NFA) and Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA); the Congolese Institute for Nature Conservation (ICCN) and Direction for Inventories and Forest Management (DIAF) in the Democratic Republic of Congo; the Rwanda Office for National Parks and Tourism (ORTPN); the United Na-tions Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Sites; and the UNEP Great Apes Survival Project (GRASP) Scien-tific Commission.

sTraTegy: The strategy of the PAWAR project is to increase the flow of remote sensing information into conservation management and analysis among all levels of civil society in support of conservation decision-making.

park cd series: As part of an integrated conservation management plan for the Albertine Rift region, the Woods Hole Research Center has developed a series of informational CDs to help facilitate protected area management and decision making. These materials can be downloaded from our website: www.whrc.org/africa/PAWAR/PAWAR-data.htm

Located in southwestern Uganda, Bwindi Impenetrable National Park (BINP) is home to nearly half the remaining population of mountain gorillas (Gorilla gorilla beringei). Protected areas throughout the Alber-tine Rift are increasingly threatened by illegal activities including poaching and encroachment (above: mountain gorillas in BINP; right: southern border of BINP).

As part of the PAWAR project, Woods Hole Research Center staff is conducting training workshops to build capacity in the use of geospatial technologies (remote sensing and geographic informa-tion systems) among protected area managers in support of conserva-tion decision-making (top: Nadine Laporte (WHRC) consults with Dr. Margaret Driciru, a Uganda Wild-life Authority biologist in Queen Elizabeth National Park); bottom: 2006 Kampala workshop