In January 97, the University of Maryland hosted a two week long workshop on the use of Remote Sensing and GIS for Forest Monitoring in Central Africa.  Nine in-country experts and numerous invited speakers from different programs and institutions (TREES, PATHFINDER, IGBP, USFS, WWF, ...) participated in this workshop. The program of the workshop included the following topics: forest monitoring, forest biomass estimation, land-use and land-cover modeling, regional and local biodiversity management, etc. The workshop was funded by CARPE and the World Bank REIMP Project. The conclusions and the wishes of the participants are expressed in their final declaration (in french).

In June 97, experts from Central African Republic, Congo and Zaire visited the Landsat PATHFINDER Project under an IGBP START grant. The objective of the visit was for the participants to become familiar with the Land-Use and Land-Cover Change (LUCC) studies. The visit was closely linked to the PATHFINDER in-country validation exercise, in which the African experts were involved, but also to the IGBP-LUCC modeling research framework. The latter was carried out in collaboration with the Remote Sensing Laboratory of the University of Louvain in Belgium (Prof. E. Lambin). 

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