Since a couple of days we host a new guest scientist from Ghana here with us in Würzburg. Mrs. Ernestina Annan is PhD student at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi. Together with our partner Prof. Dr. Markus Disse from Technical University Munich (TUM) we support Ernestina in her studies.

Ernestina Annan has a background in Agricultural and Soil/Water Engineering with a passion in Natural Resource Management and Conservation. She currently undertaking her PhD research in Climate Change and Land Use at the WASCAL Doctoral Program on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use at KNUST, focusing on assessment of the ‘Impact of Land Use/Cover and Climate Change on Water Balance in the Ouémé River Basin, Benin’. This region in Benin covers close to 50 % of the country’s land surface and serves as the ‘food basket’ of the country. Over the years, rapid population growth, water scarcity and inaccessibility, and at the same time rapid expansion of agricultural activities have characterized Benin. In order to ensure integrated and sustainable water management strategies, it is important to understand the dynamics of land use/cover, and its consequential impact on a basin’s hydrology. Therefore, she first assess past land use change in the basin using GIS and Remote Sensing techniques, and then use the generated land use maps as input scenarios to estimate discharge in a hydrological model environment. She also like to use climate models and scenarios to estimate future impacts on the hydrology of the basin.