UNEP/CGIAR Newsletter No. 9, May 1996

USE OF GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS IN AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH

A joint project of UNEP and CGIAR systems, implemented by UNEP/GRID-Arendal,
with the 3 following aims:

* to coordinate and integrate CGIAR centers' approaches to use GIS by
establishing a personal network
* to strengthen the capacities to apply GIS in sustainable agricultural
research,
* to contribute to further development of global databases relevant to
agricultural research

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CONTENT:

I. internal

II. network (center visits, workshop, meetings, data catalogue)

III. data set production

IV. external (contributions)

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I. internal
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**WHO IS 'THE PROJECT TEAM'?**

When we are talking about the 'project team' or 'project secreteriat' - who do we mean? It suddenly occurred to me that this could be somewhat in the mist for most outsiders of GRID-Arendal, so I want to make things clear here once and forever. There are currently as many as 6 people from GRID-Arendal spending time on this project regularly with variable intensity. They are:

- Svein Tveitdal, director of GRID-Arendal and chairman of the Steering Committee of the project, assists in general project planning and through his involvement with the Steering Committee, and keeps the relations with the donor, the Norwegian Ministry of foreign affairs, and potential future donors,

- Otto Simonett, former project manager, helps out with his knowledge about all the institutions involved, experts and not the least his GIS expertise, and gives valuable advise in the project planning process

- Gwynneth Martin, Ottawa, hired by GRID-Arendal on a contractual basis for this project, has conducted the majority of Center visits and was involved in the overall project planning from the start,

- Morten Sorensen carried out two Center visits and was part of the delegation to Washington in September 1995 for various meetings in the World Bank, IFPRI, and the CG secretariat,

- Lorant Czaran, visiting scientist at GRID, has the responsibility for everything regarding the data catalogue, and is heavily involved with the efforts to design the project's WWW homepage, which is still in a preliminary phase,

- Claudia Heberlein, finally, is acting as project manager, editing the requirement study report, keeping up the e-mail and fax communication of everything only distantly related to the project, and is just now also writing this newsletter...

- In addition, Ron Witt of GRID-Geneva had the responsibility for the co-ordination of the data production subcontract work.

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II networking
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**CENTER VISITS**

>From April 29 until May 3 the project team with Morten Sorensen and Claudia Heberlein visited IITA to add another chapter to the requirement study report. We were, despite of the very busy time due to the IITA Board meeting taking place at the same time, introduced to a tremendous number of scientists from all divisions. Their knowledge about possibilities of GIS applications in their field and therefore the variety of ideas for projects were impressive. This is certainly due to a broad awareness building process which took place over a period of several years at IITA. The Center also has a long experience in training NARS in GIS with a tool developed in-house. For the detailed report of all the visits I ask you to wait for the Arendal III workshop where it will be presented. Those who are not participating in the meeting can request a summary from GRID-Arendal.

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** ARENDAL III WORKSHOP**

June 17-21 is coming closer, and preparations for the annual meeting are under way. We are still expecting reactions to the first project draft sent out to participants. We have had only 3 NOs from centers, a remarkable attendance! I want to remind you here that the success of the meeting largely depends on every one of your's contributions and active participation, since the objective is to find ways to create a durable network for data, information and expertise exchange to allow efficient and valuable output from GIS related project in agricultural research.

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** MEETINGS**

>From April 15-17, the project was represented at the CG Impact Assessment and Evaluation Workshop at ISNAR. Svein Tveitdal, director of GRID-Arendal, showed in his presentation possibilities of using environmental indicators in applied GIS. GIS is definitely a suitable technology to use if some co-ordinated approaches in impact assessment should be taken. This for our group important issue will be taken up at the Arendal III workshop again in connection with the USAID/World Bank 'Athens' initiative on indicators for IA&E (See newsletter #8).

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III data set production
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No news from that end. There are some preliminary talks with different partners which might result in the release of various data on CD-ROMs.

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IV contributions
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Some people obviously felt guilty when seeing the empty contributions section in the last newsletter, and I received a number of press releases advertising mainly commmercial products which could be of interest to you. I regard the role of this newsletter also being a channel of distribution of such information, but please let me know if you feel this is only blocking your transmission capacity off the e-mail lines, then I will not forward this information any longer!

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**WRI Releases 1:1 Million GIS Database for Africa**

The World Resources Institute announces the release of the Africa Data Sampler (ADS), a comprehensive 1:1 million scale GIS database for every country in Africa. The ADS includes map data from the following GIS databases: Roads, rivers, settlements, and other essential base map features were extracted from the Arc/Info version of the Digital Chart of the World (ESRI, Redlands, CA), forests, wetlands, and protected areas from the Biodiversity Map Library (WCMC, Cambridge, UK), and sub-national boundaries and population estimates from the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (Santa Barbara, CA). All features are registered to the DCW to allow the creation of multi-national maps and mosaics and integration with other DCW-compatible databases such as the 1 km resolution DCW-derived digital elevation model for all of Africa produced by the U.S. Geological Survey/EROS Data Center (Sioux Falls, SD). The ADS comprises a CD-ROM and User's Guide. The CD-ROM contains digital maps in PC ARC/INFO format for 53 countries in Robinson projection, five sample views in ArcView 1 format for each country, and ARC/INFO Export files for all countries in geographic projection. The 150-page User's Guide is available in both English and French and gives detailed information on the ADS data sources, data quality, and applications. The ADS is available for $179 (U.S.). Contact: WRI Publications, P.O. Box 4852, Hampden Station, Baltimore, MD 21211. Telephone: 1-800-822-0504 or 1-410-516-6963. Fax: 1-410-516-6998 or e-mail to Jake Brunner <jakeb@wri.org>

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The following is a press release that reached me more coincidently, but I assume it could be of interest if not for you personally then to other scientists in the CG Centers:

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**Beat the information overload with Agriculture and Environment for Developing Regions: a new, stand-alone information service for researchers and experts**

The new monthly journal Agriculture and Environment for Developing Regions, and its electronic equivalent the TROPAG & RURAL database, are the only comprehensive information services for researchers and experts interested in agriculture and environmental management in the developing countries. Both the printed journal and the database act as an antidote to the modern information overload where experts and researchers are faced with a bewildering choice between, on the one hand, huge information services with their literally millions of abstracts and, on the other, many thousand of primary journals, books and reports. No researcher can scan this information alone to find the key material in his or her discipline. First published in January 1996, Agriculture and Environment for Developing Regions aims to counteract the information overload by annually selecting 6000 key articles and monographs from the contents of more than 4000 journals and many more thousands of books, conference reports and theses. These 6000 key documents are then abstracted by subject specialists for inclusion in the journal. Disciplines covered include plant breeding, animal husbandry, forestry, production economics, environmental sciences, land management and agronomy. All tropical crops are covered including rice, coffee, cocoa, sugar cane and many others. Poultry, cattle, goats, rabbits, sheep and camels are all included. The international literature on agricultural production can be found in seven chapters in the "Production and processing" section. This is complemented by two further sections on "Agricultural development" and "Environmental management" respectively, giving the new journal comprehensive coverage of the issues relevant to agriculture in the developing countries of Africa, Asia and the Pacific, and Latin America and the Caribbean. The 6000 abstracts published in the journal each year are also placed on the TROPAG & RURAL bibliographic database, available on CD-ROM and on-line. The TROPAG & RURAL CD-ROM, published by SilverPlatter, contains some 116,000 abstracts from the international literature on tropical agriculture and rural development from 1975 onwards. The database's traditional coverage comprised the international literature on the cultivation of food and industrial crops, animal husbandry, forage and pastures, and post-harvest technology. Its scope has gradually been expended to reflect growing international interest in farming systems, agroforestry and, especially, in the environmental aspects of agriculture. The bibliographic database and journal, incorporating Abstracts on Tropical Agriculture, are produced on a non-profit basis by member institutes of the European Consortium for Agricultural Research in the Tropics (ECART), notably by the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) of the Netherlands and the Centre de Coopration Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Dveloppement (CIRAD) of France.
For a sample copy of the journal or a one month's free trial of the TROPAG & RURAL CD-ROM, please contact:

Sarah Cummings

Promotion & Marketing Manager
Information, Library & Documentation
Royal Tropical Institute (KIT)
Mauritskade 63
1092 AD Amsterdam
The Netherlands

Tel: (31) 20-5688 347
Fax: (31) 20-6654 423
e-mail: IBD@support.nl
Date of release: 15 March 1996

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Although I know that still a lot of you don't have access
to WWW, this might be of interest for some:
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**CIESIN Announces WWW Access to Gateway**

CIESIN invites you to visit the new "Gateway" site on the World Wide Web. The CIESIN Gateway provides users with information about data bases useful for the study of global change, sustainable development, and human interactions in the environment. Previously (per Sue Schram's demonstration at the Arendal meeting) access to the CIESIN Gateway has been only through downloadable client software available on-line at http://www.ciesin.org/gateway/gw-home.html. Gateway retrieves resource locators that have been registered at various sites on the Internet. These include the Global Change Master Directory which is maintained by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) directory, the CIESIN Information Cooperative, and others internationally. Thousands of entries of socioeconomic and natural science resources are available. Direct access to the CIESIN Gateway using the World Wide Web is being developed in phases. This first phase patterns the interface after familiar WWW search engines such as InfoSeek and Lycos. Gateway users request information through free-text searches. It is hoped that this simple and familiar interface will enable the broadest number of users to take advantage of the information available. Later phases will introduce more sophisticated capabilities similar to those available in the downloadable Gateway client. CIESIN welcomes you to examine the system and use the built in feedback mechanism to submit suggestions for improvements. The interface provides all of the documentation needed to exercise its capabilities. The user only needs access to a WWW browser which supports forms and tables. CIESIN recommends Netscape v1.1N or later, Microsoft Internet Explorer, or Mosaic 2.O or later (PC only). If you have any questions concerning CIESIN or Gateway, please contact CIESIN User Services at 1-517-797-2727 or send your e-mail query to: gateway.beta@ciesin.org or ciesin.info@ciesin.org

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UNEP/CGIAR Newsletter No. 9, May 1996

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