The event was organised by the Ukrainian PONTOS team and the staff of the Regional Centre for Integrated Monitoring and Environmental Studies of Odesa and National I.I. Mechnikov University, and held online on 27-28 October 2021. The training participants represented regional and local administrations, non-governmental organisations, water management and nature protection agencies. However, the topic attracted the greatest interest from the younger generation – young lecturers, researchers, postgraduates, master’s students and, of course, practitioners working in the Ukrainian pilot area. In total, 50 participants attended this event.

The training demonstrated that Earth Observation has great potential for daily use by almost anyone, from a student to a regional agency representative. Earth Observation is a source of objective information for environmental monitoring and can significantly increase stakeholders’ awareness of the state of the environment, especially in the Black Sea Basin countries where the in situ environmental monitoring network is still underdeveloped.

Part of the tools and products introduced during the training will be soon be available through the platform developed by the partnership of the project Copernicus assisted environmental monitoring across the Black Sea Basin – PONTOS (BSB889).

Training material, resources and recordings are available here. More information about this training session are published on the project website: https://pontos-eu.aua.am/the-1st-training-session-on-earth-observation-eo-and-environmental-monitoring-for-young-scientists-and-practitioners/.