ERI Monitoring Officer and Database Administrator Travel to Panama for GIS and RS Course

During the last couple months, members of the ERI staff have been up and about participating in various workshops and trainings. The latest, a GIS and Remote Sensing Course, was held in Panama and involved Database Administrator, Nicole Weatherburne and Ivanna Waight, ERI Monitoring Officer. The course, held by Centro del Agua del Trópico Húmedo para America Latina y el Caribe (CATHALAC) and Florida State University (FSU), ran from August 13th through to the 17th. Ivanna and Nicole were involved in both the theoretical and practical aspects of GIS and Remote Sensing as conducted by instructors, Emil Cherrington, Betzy Hernandez, Octavio Smith, and Jose Guardia of CATHALAC and Dr. Alex Coles, professor, at FSU.

The week included several lectures focused on Geographic Positioning Systems, Imagery Classification, Analysis of Spectral Mixtures, Indices of Vegetation to name a few. These were complimented by a series of exercise sessions and field practicals where Ivanna and Nicole had the opportunity to gain hands-on experience in the collection, analysis and manipulation of different types of data in software ranging from Google Earth to ENVI and ArcGIS. One exercise in particular was conducted in the Metropolitan Natural Park which involved gathering GPS data and processing the data using Google Earth and ArcMap.

“It was a remarkable course! I really appreciated that both theory and practical sessions were incorporated into the course. I look forward to applying the skills and knowledge gained to my work at the ERI.” Ivanna said as she recalled the experience.