Context and objectives
The CSIR and the Africa Centre for Climate and Earth System Science (ACCESS), are jointly looking to fill the following positions:
TWO (2) OCEAN SYSTEMS / NUMERICAL MODELLERS
We are looking for candidates with a strong background in Ocean System numerical modelling in global coupled ocean – atmosphere modelling and / or high resolution Regional Ocean Modelling.
The purpose of these positions is to build a strong interdisciplinary team that will provide leadership in the reduction in the uncertainties of future climate projections around southern Africa. These will be based at the Centre for High Performance Computing in Cape Town which offers a range of parallel processing platforms on which to run models. It will focus primarily on the biogeochemical and oceanographic processes that are relevant to understanding and more reliably predicting future states and changes to marine and linked terrestrial ecosystem services around southern Africa.
Qualifications and Experience:DRC possess an outstanding ecological richness, among other in the 5 World heritage sites (UNESCO), for which an active conservation policy is made by the “Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature” (ICCN). Despite a difficult political and local situation (war), the different sites are in the scope of an international mobilisation for their preservation. The needs of relevant and up to date observations and data to maintain the knowledge of the preservation stage of the parks are crucial. Most of the actors, including ICCN don’t have coherent, complete, nor the relevant data and information system to deal with that issue.
In this context, the Project aimes to (i) make (cost-effetive) use of satellite images to derive maps to support conservation activities for all five World Heritage sites in the Democratic Republic of Congo: Virunga, Kahuzi-Biega, Okapi, Salonga and Garamba, (ii) deliver an operational GIS system (with predefined layers of information) to ICCN headquarters and individual park areas and (iii) demonstrate the usefulness of remote sensing for monitoring application; , (iv) provide assistance and capacity building activities for the headquarters of ICCN as well as the main park authorities. Considerable efforts are made for effective (qualitative) data-sharing with local and international NGO and other partners ( ESA, EC-JRC),..).
Project outcome
Expected scientific results
Within the ICCN organisation structure, a new entity has been created. This entity called the “SYGAIP cell” (in regards with the Project acronym) is currently composed of a team of twelve persons, two in Kinshasa, the central office and two in each of the five parks. These persons are responsible for the field patrol data collection, control and integration in the information system set up by the project in partnership with the ICCN and its NGO partners. The system relies on the base GIS layers used for the production of the base map at the 1:200 000 scale.
ICCN staffs have been involved in the whole System development. They have also been trained accordingly.
In order to demonstrates the usefulness of the remote sensing to monitor the world heritage sites, SPOT images have been processed and analysed in the region of the Semliki River (North Virunga). In collaboration with WWF, a forest cover change analysis has been undertaken from both side of the Simliki River. Encroachments around the river have been mapped and quantified.
Also, historical aerial data (+ 50 years old) and recent satellite images drapped over a DEM resulted in interactive 3D Landscape reconstruction and comparison to highlight the land changes that occurred in more than 50 years.
Link up with ESA project ‘Gorilla habitat mapping’.
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