SEARCH: training and capacity building for data information in Support of Euro-African collaboration on Research in global CHange

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The objective of this project is to build a network of African and European scientists working on environments and climates in Africa with the willingness to gather environmental data in order to facilitate research networking and to improve the flow and exchange of information on Global Change research. In these respects, these data are valuable tools at two levels:

• They enable to better know the past environmental changes and to better understand the mechanisms of these changes by comparing them to model simulations;
• They can be used to understand the impact of global changes on ecological systems and biodiversity.

The project will produce a documented data set of changes in regional ecosystems across sub-Saharan Africa. Maps extracted from this data set will serve as a target for evaluation of vegetation model simulations in the past.
Paleovegetation mapping at different time and geographical scales will contribute to distinguish the roles of climate change and human action in the ecosystem evolution and to understand the implications of global changes on natural resources: plant distribution, evolution of ecosystems, related soil and water resources, and the like in regions characterised by their fragility and instability.

The project will provide a detailed description of the evolution of tropical ecosystems in Africa during the Late Quaternary. It will provide elements for a better knowledge of biodiversity and ecosystem dynamics in the past essential to the understanding of their future evolution as required by research programmes developed by European laboratories involved in Global Change or Land Use studies.
The project will provide the framework for co-ordination of national efforts, through international co-operation, to standardise the methods for collection and analysis of environmental data.
The project will help to identify gaps in research and will guide regional research efforts.

The project involves several types of expertise that are not available within a single research group: it involves the combination of laboratory and field approaches and statistical techniques to analyse the results in terms of regional or continental changes, developed separately in the European and African laboratories concerned. Knowledge of local vegetation and land use traditions are well developed in the African groups; laboratory and statistical techniques, studies on Global Change are developed in the European ones. This, with the general imbalance of resources, communication and research between the developed and developing countries, and within Africa itself, strongly limits the effectiveness of any attempts in Global Change researches. The project, in the framework of a close co-operation between Europe and Africa, will provide tools to maintain and develop efforts for high level research in Africa.

It will assist efforts to train student and young scientists to assess past biodiversity in Africa and understand its evolution under climatic or human control. This will consist of:

• Integration during 6 months of 4 students into well-equipped laboratories;
• Training courses and workshops for scientific and computer training with the appropriate software's;
• Toulouse training course from 15 to 19 November 1999 on the building of database;
• Jena workshop in October 2000 on the use of database for the modelling of the African environmental change;
• Nairobi workshop as case show for the project, in October 2001;
• facilitate the participation of African scientists in international research programmes;
• distribute products (CD-ROM; data compilation, Web mirrors,etc.).

M. Hoepffner (MEDIAS-FRANCE at Toulouse, France) co-ordinates administratively the project, and organises with R. Moore (NERC-Institute of Hydrology at Wallingford, in UK) the review of communications needs and the establishing of equipment and training requirements for the Pan-African Database Centre at Nairobi and the running of the training course at Toulouse
A.M. Lezine, from the University Pierre- & Marie-Curie (Paris), coordinates scientifically the project, with:

• S. Harrison, from Max-Planck-Institute for BioGeoChemistry (Jena, in Germany),
• J. Guiot, from the University of Aix-Marseille (Marseille, in France),
• J.P.Lacaux, from the Laboratoire d'Aérologie (Toulouse, in France).

• Implement a modern, efficient and interoperable electronic communications, and data and information system (DIS) including GIS capability at the University of Nairobi, Kenya to facilitate global change research collaboration, synthesis and information exchange between scientists and institutions in the European Union and those in sub-Saharan Africa, in co-operation with MEDIAS-FRANCE;
• Train a critical mass of information technology managers at two levels: leaders who can train others to effectively use the Internet for information or communication of global change research and core groups of technical experts to ensure long-term stewardship (including maintenance of web sites and physical electronic communications equipment) and improvement of electronic communications nodes and networking in sub-Saharan Africa to bring the region up to international standards of information technology;
• Organise trainings for the African scientists on the construction and use of global change databases in European institutions, and the case show workshop at Nairobi at the end of the project (November 2001).