Mutual Training in Burkina Faso

In April, our dedicated WASCAL PhD student, Famoussa Dembele, took the opportunity during a personal visit to Burkina Faso to meet up for training with his fellow PhD students and colleagues from the Laboratory of Plant Biology and Ecology of the Université Joseph KI-ZERBO (UJKZ).

Famoussa is actually studying at WASCAL Graduate School for Climate Change and Land Use in Kumasi, Ghana, and is affiliated with our project partners at CSIR - Forestry Research Institute Of Ghana, Kumasi, Ghana. Therewith, he is assessing GHG emissions from different land-use types with our chamber systems as well as through biomass burning. For the former method, he just received hands-on training in February in Ghana.

Now, he could pass his gained knowledge to the PhD students in Burkina Faso, Christian Bougma, Valaire Yaro, and Gannouka Nadjire. After meeting up with them at UJKZ, Famoussa explained to them how to assemble all parts of the chamber with its accessories and how to use the software and data loggers for gas measurements. On a fallow plot at Gonsé (a study site of the Burkina Faso team), he practically demonstrated the installation of the chambers as well as the gas sampling with vials.

Vice versa, Christian and Valaire taught Famoussa the assessment of carbon emissions from biomass burning during field preparation. We are very lucky to have these enthusiastic PhD students that pass on their knowledge to each other in order to learn new methods and improve data collection throughout our climate gradient under investigation in West Africa!

Thanks to our two PIs (Reginald Guuroh, CSIR-FORIG, Ghana, and Prof. Oumarou Ouédraogo, UJKZ, Burkina Faso) for initiating this get-together!