Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences

Accelerating Education in Interdisciplinary Geographic Science and Technology in India: Proposal to the Obama-Singh 21st Century Knowledge Initiative.

Dr. John J. Kineman

Wessman Research Group

Prior research in India focused on developing ecological niche modeling methods and a high-quality geographic database, collaborating with scientists and students at three institutions in India. The Obama-Singh 21st Century Knowledge Initiative, announced last year, affords an excellent opportunity to advance this work and build long-term capacity in India and scholarly exchange with the University of Colorado via CIRES, the Graduate School, and the Office of International Education. India needs improved capacity for conducting geographical analysis to predict and manage problems of ecosystem response to environmental change. Enhancing this expertise at the graduate level will demonstrate the practical value of geospatial technology and interdisciplinary science education to meet current environmental research and management challenges. Advances in Geographic Information Systems and related geospatial modeling software provide the key enabling technologies. Our objective is to provide a critical threshold of training that will build interest among academicians in interdisciplinary landscape science and geospatial technology demonstrated at three institutions in southern India, via collaborative multi-level training and case-study involvement. We will install necessary software at existing facilities and provide individualized training and educational exchanges that will integrate with each institution’s existing programs. Methods will be evaluated for long-term application. The main benefit will be to produce experts who will enhance available capacity and train others with relatively little outside assistance, and attract students. The project will stimulate and leverage the production of partners and leaders to creatively solve environment-ecosystem problems that especially threaten developing, highly populated, biodiversity rich, and climatically vulnerable regions such as India, but that also have global implications. Scholars inside and outside of India will benefit from exposure to the problems and capabilities of this region, brought into global education contexts.