This proposal supports the development of global change research capacity in eighteen countries in the Americas, and represents a contribution of the United States Government to a project grant from the World Bank's Global Environment Facility (GEF) that is administered through the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and executed by the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI), an initiative to stimulate global change research among the scientific institutions of the Americas. The eligible countries are: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Jamaica, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. The proposal will support the training of specialists in the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) as tools for conducting for global change research, using equipment bought by the project and software donated by both the Government of Brazil and the European Centre for Medium- range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF). The project will support the purchase of reference materials for research, and the purchase of a limited number of LANDSAT scenes for training and research on global change issues. The project will support a small number of graduate students through a scholarship program, and provide the backbone for a data and information system for the exchange of global change data resulting from IAI-sponsored research between members of research teams in the Americas, including the USA and Canada. This project will specifically give US researchers access to data sets from the rest of the Americas that have previously been inaccessible. The National Science Foundation is the designated U.S. Government agency to carry out U.S. responsibilities within the IAI.
