Building Capacity for Decision Makers in Ghana for Sustainable Land Use Planning using Earth Observations and Open-Source GIS Tools

Abstract

The total population of Ghana has tripled between 1960 and 2015. During the same period, the urban population, however, grew more than 11 times. Rapid urbanization and large increase in population dramatically changed the land cover of the West African country. For example, agricultural land expanded from occupying 13% in mid-1970s to more than a third of Ghana's total land area today. In the meantime, forests and savannas face a huge pressure of being converted to agricultural or urban land uses. The Ghana Land Use Project (GALUP) aims at enhancing the country's capacity in dealing with these challenges. The project engages both institutions and government agencies in Ghana to deliver a series of training workshops focused on remote sensing and geospatial technologies that can facilitate the formulation of sustainable land use plans. Inperson workshops were planned initially, but because of travel restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the first GALUP workshop-Land-Use Suitability Analysis with QGIS Tools-was conducted online. Such means of capacity building presented an exceptional opportunity to explore novel methods for transferring knowledge while also forging strong partnerships that are easier with in-person meetings. The 3-month long workshop was delivered in a hybrid mode featuring synchronous and asynchronous components. This hybrid mode was unusual for both trainers and the 41 trainees from four organizations including the Land Use and Spatial Planning Authority (LUSPA), the Center for Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Services (CERSGIS), the International Crop Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and the Agro-Hydrological and Meteorological Centre (AGRHYMET) in Niger. The synchronous component involved weekly meetings and discussion session, and the asynchronous component consisted of a GitHub repository. The repository contained (a) fourteen open-source GIS tools developed for land-use suitability modeling, (b) a discussion channel for Q&A and idea-sharing, and (c) four modules of training materials, each equipped with customized videos and multiple exercises to boost the learning process. The repository has received over 13,000 views since the beginning of the workshop.