Remote Sensing of the Senegal River Basin Workshop, An OMVS/ SNRE Project

The workshop was held Dec 7-11, 2009 and was focused on providing training and insights into the processing and use of advanced remote sensing data by OMVS personnel. The Workshop is part of the Arizona Remote Sensing Center’s (ARSC) development of a remote sensing monitoring and assessment system for the Senegal River basin. Van Leeuwen and Casady trained OMVS scientists in the use and applications of remotely sensed time series data, including both the theory and software needed for these analyses. Ultimately, this work will result in the implementation at OMVS of an automated data acquisition, processing, visualization, and extraction package that ARSC has been developing over the past 10 years. 

                The training workshop allowed for the transfer of all data and software and OMVS is currently   setting up the computing resources for the creation of an OMVS remote sensing center. ARSC will continue their involvement with the development of applications that specifically will monitor and assess: 1) invasive Typha growth (a reed, clogging water channels and causing water loss due to increased evapotranspiration) along the Senegal river, 2) inundation of rural communities and agricultural lands during rainfall events, and 3) in the future map and examine the impact of fires on land use and land cover. One day of the visit included a reconnaissance field trip in which the ARSC and OMVS team visited agricultural areas, observed the enormous amounts of Typha along the river and walked over the Diama dam north of Saint-Louis that regulates the last part of the river. On the final day of the visit van Leeuwen and Casady presented their activities to several Senegalese dignitaries and met with the OMVS High Commissioner, Mohamed Salem Ould Merzoug who directs the OMVS efforts in the basin.3During the coming year the ARSC team will continue with training events and development efforts in collaboration with OMVS and other UA departments which include the Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology (BARA) - Mamadou Baro and Tim Finan. Additional members of ARSC involved in the project include: Chuck Hutchinson, Stuart Marsh, and Barron Orr; and several staff members and students - Nate Bryant, Aaryn Olsson, Ivan Lizarraga, Jennifer Davison, Jahan Kariyeva and Abd salam el Vilaly.