Held on the University of Costa Rica campus in San Jose, from 8/7-12/23, the AmeriGEO Week 2023 event showcased Earth observation (EO) activities across the Americas and brought together almost 300 members of the regional Earth observation community, in an effort to spur regional collaboration in the use of EO. Given SERVIR’s activities in the region, members of the SERVIR Science Coordination Office (SCO) at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center likewise played key roles in the event.
SERVIR’s Global Program Manager, Dan Irwin (ST11) gave keynote remarks highlighting scientific and technological advances in the region and the growth of institutional capacity for leveraging geospatial and satellite information. Natalia Bermúdez, the Inter-American Associate based at the SERVIR SCO, and Betzy Hernández, SERVIR’s Central America Regional Coordination Lead, participated in the event’s organization committee. Nancy Searby, NASA’s Applied Science Capacity Building Program Manager hosted a session on the integration of capacity building into climate change adaptation applications of earth observations along with Bermúdez. Nina Copeland, a SERVIR Graduate Research Assistant, presented parts of her thesis research on the use of the Soil Water and Assessment Tool (SWAT) model for analyzing the impacts of land use land cover change in the Belize River watershed. Lauren Carey, SERVIR’s Central America Regional Science Associate, supported a post-event Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) workshop led by the Central American Aerospace Network (RAC, in Spanish), which replicated training previously given by SERVIR Applied Science Team PI Franz Meyer of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.
In addition to the participation by members of the SERVIR SCO, Jose Fernandes of SERVIR Amazonia and its host organization, the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), also participated, as did Jorge Cabrera, one of SERVIR’s Subject Matter Experts.
