In November 2021, the American University of Armenia held a three-day training on Earth Observation and Environmental Monitoring for young scientists and practitioners.
The target group of the training consisted of national authorities, educational, and research institutions, learning the use of multidimensional and multispectral earth observation tools and products. Some of these will soon be available through the platform developed by the partnership of the project Copernicus assisted environmental monitoring across the Black Sea Basin – PONTOS (BSB889), offering easy-to-use and easy-to-access free online services for various specialists, including those without technical skills to write codes and algorithms for processing data.
The training was designed to include theoretical and practical components, including fieldwork. The first two days included an introduction and use of earth observation (EO) tools and applications, such as Sentinel Hub, EarthTrack, SNAP, and Copernicus Open Access Hub, as well as the upcoming PONTOS platform.
The training also touched upon the need to improve the analysis of image data for better results. Field observations and data collection are a few of the most important steps in the remote sensing process. So, on the third day of the training, a field trip was organized to the project pilot area in Armenia, the Lake Sevan Basin, where the team conducted data collection and ground-truthing.
The next series of training will take place in Spring 2022 comprising practical work in the pilot area.
The training resources are available using this link.
More information about this training session can be found at: https://pontos-eu.aua.am/firsttrainingam/.