RCMRD hosted a Global Land Cover Mapping Training with emphasize on bamboo mapping in on 13th and 14th of January 2017. The training was organized in collaboration with the International Network for Bamboo and Rattan and Tsinghua University of China.

19 participants from Rwanda, Uganda, Ethiopia, Kenya representing Rwanda Natural Resources Authority (RNRA); Uganda’s National Forest Authority (NFA); Ethiopia’s Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MEFCC); Kenya Forest Service (KFS), Kenya Forest Research Institute (KEFRI), Green Belt Movement (GBM). Participants were introduced to the Global Land Cover Mapping and Bamboo mapping efforts. Participants undertook practical exercises on using the portal combined with Google Earth Engine Platform to carry out image interpretation and selecting land cover class samples of any area on the globe. Particular focus was on sampling natural as well as plantation bamboo forests in each country which will be further used to map bamboo occurrences around the world.