This award will support the participation of two American and four African scientists in a US-Kenya Workshop on Global Analysis, Interpretation, and Modelling (GAIM), to be held at Mombasa, Kenya, March 3-12, 1997. The co-organizers are Dr. Dork Sahagian, Executive Director for the Global Analysis, Interpretation, and Modelling Task Force of the International Geosphere Biosphere Program (IGPP) with the International Council of Scientific Unions, and faculty member of the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space at the University of New Hampshire; and Dr. Wandera Ogana, Dean of Sciences at the University of Nairobi in Kenya. The workshop will include seven participants from the United States, and about twenty-five from South Africa and the rest of the Subsaharan Africa region. Global and environmental changes confront all regions of the world, and are particularly challenging to developing regions which often contain both the cause and the effect of the environmental change. Based on data collected on the complex global biogeochemical cycles of the earth's physical-climate systems, the GAIM Task Force will develop an integrated set of biogeochemical Earth System Models, to be used to predict future environmental changes and their regional and global impacts. Many African researchers have been studying these issues, but little is known about the data they have collected. This workshop, with its focus on modelling and data analysis of the biogeochemical and ecological processes important in both global and African environmental change, will enable all participants to present their current research activities and interact with each other. During the workshop the African participants will also be introduced to four research models relevant to African hydrology, climate, and ecosystems, and team modelling projects will be started. During the following year participants will continue to work on these projects, in collaboration with their US colleagues, after which a follow-up workshop will be held to discuss their results. This grant will support the participation of a prominent researcher and young investigator from the United States and four African researchers, three of whom are in the early to mid stages of their careers to participate in an international activity.
