ERI Staff Receive Training in Hydrological and Climate Model Outputs

As one of the early steps in getting the ERI’s new project off the ground and completing one of the first project outputs, Terrestrial Science Director, Dr. Elma Kay, and Monitoring Officer, Ivanna Waight-Cho, travelled to Panama City where they participated in a training to build the capacity of the ERI in using hydrological and climate model outputs.

The project, “Assessing the Potential Impacts of Climate Change in Belize Water Resources” involves the utilization of modeling to assess the potential impacts of climate change on the supply and demand for water and water quality in Belize across different climate change and land use change scenarios.

The training was led by Emil Cherrington, Senior Scientist at Centro del Agua del Trópico Húmedo para America Latina y el Caribe (CATHALAC) who is also the only partner of the project. One of the first things covered at the training was a revision and practice of land cover classification using imagery of Belize. Along with this, Dr. Kay and Mrs. Waight-Cho practiced the use of IDRISI LCM for land cover scenario generation which can be used to assess baseline conditions and future scenarios. They also learned how to implement ArcSWAT for pilot watersheds.

This first training workshop was specifically geared towards building the capacity of the ERI and the next training workshop (for ERI staff) to follow will be geared towards producing some of the results for the project.