• The official mandate of the « Centre de Recherche Geographique et de Production Cartographique » (CERGEC) of Brazzaville is to produce and update the topographic maps of Congo. The Center  also keeps the archive of the IGN aerial photos. In the context of the « Projet de Gestion et de Conservation des Aires Protegees » (PROGECAP), funded by the GEF, the CERGEC has developed its GIS and Remote Sensing Processing capacities to support field surveys of its partners (IUCN, WCS, ...). In addition, the Center uses RADAR data to map vegetation in the southern part of Congo and has started digitizing the existing 1 : 200,00 scale topographic maps. 


 
 

Fig. 18 

• The «Projet de Conservation et de Protection des Ecosystemes du Nord-Congo » (PROECO) is funded by the German Cooperation and is carried out by the Ministry of Water and Forest Resources « Service des Inventaires et Amenagements Forestiers » (SIA) with the support of GTZ and the German private company PSC. The objective of the project is to develop a sustainable management plan for the forest of Northern Congo. PROECO has used GIS  to integrate the field information with the other relevant data in Brazzaville: topographic maps, satellite data interpretations, logging concessions limits, forest status, socio-economic surveys.  The GIS facilities should be transferred in the near future to the « Direction Regionale des Eaux et Forets » (DREF) of Ouesso.


 
 

• The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) is in charge of the management of the Nouabale-Ndoki Reserve for PROGECAP. WCS is currently developing a Remote Sensing and GIS laboratory in Bomassa (North-Congo). WCS has also developed a unique, for Central Africa, technique for biodiversity surveys: digital aerial videography. WCS has recorded numerous low altitude video surveys in Congo and Gabon. They are planning to integrate these data with the field surveys and the satellite imageries (Landsat and JERS/ERS RADAR).


 
 

• The European ECOFAC project has acquired airborne RADAR data for its Odzala site and has produced vegetation maps at a scale of 1:50,000 by photo-interpretation(INTERA, Canada). The University of Edimburgh (England) and the University of Gent (Belgium), in collaboration with WCS, have integrated in a GIS, videography information with SPOT data over Odzala Park. Vegetation maps were produced by the University of Gent. 

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