About the training | Agenda | About the Trainers

About the Training

The American University of Armenia’s (AUA) Acopian Center for the Environment and the University of Hohenheim (UHOH) organized a training on Public Participation GIS for Ecosystem Services within the framework of the GAtES Project.
Seventeen participants from academic institutions and international organizations — including AUA faculty and staff, National Academy of Sciences researchers, Agribusiness Teaching Center faculty and GIZ GIS and biodiversity experts — took part in this five-day training.
The first part of the training, led by UHOH Professor Claudia Bieling, focused on Ecosystem Services. The aim was to develop a critical understanding of the concept of ecosystem services, its relevance and application in landscape management, including payment schemes for ecosystem services. This part of the training also provided an overview of the requirements, challenges and ways of moving forward with assessing ecosystem services.
The second part of the training, led by Dr. Maria Garcia-Martin of UHOH, introduced the tools and uses of GIS for for Public Participation GIS (PPGIS), including interviewing and analysis techniques using PPGIS.
The lectures were supplemented by practical work on creating and conducting PPGIS surveys, data preparation and visualization, spatial and non-spatial analysis, and interpretation of results.

Course Objectives

– Gain a critical understanding of the concept of ecosystem services, its relevance and its application in landscape management, including payment schemes for ecosystem services
– Get an overview of the requirements, challenges and ways forward for assessing ecosystem services
– Understand the outline and application of Public Participation GIS and acquire first experiences with all steps of carrying out a PPGIS study
– Create ideas for including ecosystem services/PPGIS in academic teaching (and beyond)

Agenda

DateSectionTopicPresentation
Sep 24, 2018 

 

 

The Ecosystem
Services
Framework

• The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) and the
concept of ecosystem services
• Results of the MA and their uptake in science, public
and policy
• Alternative concepts of human-nature relationships
 

 

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Sep 25, 2018• Payment schemes for ecosystem services
• Assessing ecosystem services
• Introduction to PPGIS: The idea
 

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Sep 26, 2018 

 

 

 

Public
Participation
GIS

• Outlook: Review of syllabi – Where to bring in ecosystem services in academic teaching?
• Conducting a PPGIS study
• Interviewing and surveying techniques
• Practice: Creating and conducting a PPGIS survey
 

 

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Sep 27, 2018• Analysis possibilities in PPGIS
• Practice:
o Data preparation
o Data visualization
o Non-spatial analysis
 

 

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Sep 28, 2018• Practice:
o Spatial analysis
o Results interpretation
• Application of PPGIS in landscape management
 

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About the Trainers

Professor Claudia Bieling

Claudia Bieling holds the Chair of Societal Transition and Agriculture at the Institute of Social Sciences in Agriculture, University of Hohenheim, Germany. Her work is rooted in transdisciplinary sustainability research and focuses on the interface of ecological and social dimensions in land-use and food systems. She works with the concepts of cultural landscapes and social-ecological resilience and draws on empirical research experience in a variety of collaborative projects (with a focus on Central and South-Western Europe). Claudia Bieling publishes extensively on land management and sustainability and edited two books with Cambridge University Press (“Resilience and the Cultural Landscape” in 2012, “The Science and Practice of Landscape Stewardship” in 2017). She serves as an associate editor for the journal “Conservation Letters”. Claudia Bieling holds a postdoctoral degree (“Habilitation”) in Landscape Management and a Ph.D. in Forest and Environmental Policy (both from University of Freiburg, Germany). She received her Diploma (equivalent to M.Sc.) in Forest Sciences from University of Göttingen, Germany.

Researcher María García-Martín

María García-Martín is a postdoctoral researcher at the Chair of Social-Ecological Interactions in Agricultural System at the Universities of Göttingen and Kassel. She also collaborates with the Chair of Societal Transition and Agriculture at the University of Hohenheim in the DAAD-funded cooperation project GAtES (German-Armenian Network on the Advancement of Public Participation GIS for Ecosystem Services as a Means for Biodiversity Conservation and Sustainable Development).

She holds a degree in Geography, a Master in Land Planning and Sustainable Local Development (Geography Department, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid), and a Ph.D. in Landscape Sustainability (Chair of Nature Conservation and Landscape Ecology, University of Freiburg).