Free course / Remote Sensing for Water Resource Management

Remote Sensing for Catchment and Water Resource Management

About This Course

Welcome to this open online course from UNESCO Open Learning. This is an introductory course in remote sensing (RS) and GIS for catchment and water resource management. The material has been developed following successful in-person courses delivered by the team in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa in January 2019, and at the UNESCO Open Water Symposium in Rabat, Morocco in October 2019.

Workload

The course represents about 4 to 5 days of work, depending on your familiarity with GIS and RS. Some familiarity with either QGIS or ArcGIS Pro would be useful, and you have the choice of completing the exercises using either of these software options. We do not expect you to have any prior remote sensing knowledge or skill.

The scope of this initial course is to provide a foundation in basic principles of remote sensing for water and catchment management, and a follow-on course focussing on specific aspects of the hydrological cycle (e.g. precipitation, evaporation, soil moisture, groundwater, etc) and relevant themes (e.g. floods, droughts, etc.) is currently under development.

Course outline

The course is structured around a series of short (20 to 30 min) lectures followed by one or more interactive practical exercises where you will learn specific analytical skills.

All the practical tasks relate to the same geographic area – catchments of the upper Msunduzi catchment near Pietermaritzburg, South Africa.

Interspersed with these are some quizzes and links to other learning resources.

We also have a series of interesting case studies prepared by the Institute of Natural Resources, South Africa, that showcase practical application of RS techniques in the context of real-world projects in various parts of Africa. The course consists of four learning units.

You can do this course at your own pace. Working through the material, including completing the tasks and quizzes will enable you to receive a certificate of attendance.

Modules

• Part 1
• 1. What is remote sensing?
• 2. Basic principles of remote sensing
• 3. Sensors and Data for Water Resources Management
• 4. Spatial data structures
• Part 2
• 1. Introduction to image interpretation
• 2. Introduction to multispectral imagery
• 3. Visualizing multispectral imagery
• 4. Analysing multispectral imagery 1: Image classification
• 5. Analysing multispectral imagery 2: Multispectral indices
• 6. Practice
• Part 3
• 1. Introduction to Remote Sensing and Radar
• 2. Introduction to Digital Elevation Models
• 3. DEM Topographic and Hydrological Analysis
• 4. Practice
• Part 4
• 1. Case Studies (Lectures)
• 2. Case Study. Lesotho (Assessment)
• 3. Case Study. South Africa (Assessment)
• 4. Case Study. Global datasets (Assessment)
• 5. Exercise 1. Land Cover Change (Assessment)
• 6. Exercise 2. Forest Data (Assessment)

Course certificate

Participants who complete the course having an 80% grade of approval in all assessments can obtain a course certificate issued by UNESCO.

Link to the website from Here