Study

Master of Science degree course in

GIS for Natural Resource Management, with KNUST, Kumasi, Ghana

KNUST premises at Kumasi, Ghana

In many African countries, the desire to meet the livelihood needs of people has led to unsound exploitation and management of natural resources. The ensuing environmental problems are numerous and commonly known: deforestation, land degradation, depletion of resources and pollution. Climate change and its direct causes, previously mostly a concern of industrialised countries, is now showing its effects world-wide and African countries are not exempted. To mitigate environmental problems, improved natural resource management is a major task, confronting planners and decision makers at all levels. This requires a good understanding of the complex factors involved as well as sound knowledge of the international environmental agenda.

Career perspective

In recent years there is an increased understanding of the importance of spatial information and its application to support decision-making in natural resources management in Ghana and other regions of Africa. Many organisations at national, regional and district levels are in need of staff with sound knowledge of natural resource management (NRM) in the national and international context, who are capable of providing technical expertise in the application of geo-information tools.

To develop the critical mass with this expertise, the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi, Ghana, and the International Institute for Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC) in Enschede, the Netherlands, have jointly developed an MSc degree course which combines sustainable management of natural resources with geo-information and earth observation tools.

Course content

The hub of the course is the application of geo-information and earth observation techniques in support of natural resources management. The course provides participants with knowledge and skills needed for the collection, interpretation and management of spatial information, using remote sensing and geographic information systems, to support planning and decision-making processes in natural resources management. The curriculum concentrates on methods for assessing the state of the resource base and the changes that occur, and progresses to the assessment of impacts and, finally, societal response.

The course is structured in three parts, each comprising of several modules of three weeks. The first two parts consist of course work, taught partly in a multi-disciplinary fashion, followed by tasks which are focused on a particular application domain such as forestry, agriculture, environmental protection and wildlife management. Students can choose tasks in one or more application areas, depending on their interest and background. This approach allows students to develop their own profile against the broad background of NRM. In the third block participants carry out their individual MSc research work in a specific field.