Within the frame of the “Green Central Asia Initiative” the Summer School under this year’s topic: “Linking scientific knowledge of water and land resources management into decision making support in Central Asia” was organized in Almaty from 11 to 20 July 2022. The Summer School is organized annually by the Helmholtz Centre Potsdam – German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ). This year, it was hosted by the German-Kazakh University (DKU) with lecturers from GFZ, the Martin Luther University Halle Wittenberg, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), DKU and the Institute of Geography of the Republic of Kazakhstan.
Nineteen students and young professionals from Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan were acquainted with innovative methods and tools for analysing and monitoring of water and land resources under a changing climate in Central Asia.
Researchers from PIK facilitated sessions on climate change in Central Asia, analysis of climate data and an introduction to climate models. The students at the summer school learned to apply different methods to visualize impacts of climate change, for example, the online platform http://climateimpactsonline.com/, which was developed at PIK.
On 15 July, a special guest visited the summer school, the Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister of Food and Agriculture, Dr. Ophelia Nick. The students had the chance to get into a discussion on global food security with the State Secretary.
Key messages:
During the 10 days of Summer School, theoretical lectures and practical exercises with discussion sessions on the implementation of new methods and tools for managing water and land resources in Central Asia were organised. The program included an in-depth introduction to geographical information systems (GIS), an overview of remote sensing applications for land and water resources monitoring, an introduction to climatological data analysis, and an introduction to GRACE satellite missions, as well as basics of writing policy briefs. For the practical exercises in data analysis, the participants used open-source tools such as QGIS (www.qgis.org ) for spatial analysis, and R (www.r-project.org ) for statistical analysis. For the final presentation, groups of participants chose their own topic and created a policy brief, based on scientific results derived from the practical exercises.
Chosen topics included:
1) Dealing with changes in precipitation in South Kazakhstan
2) How to adapt to future changes in precipitation in Central Asia
3) Consequences of Golubin Glacier melting
4) Using a hydrological forecast for the Chirchik River Basin
