Background
Over the past 5 years, researchers and scientists from Florida International University-FIU, University of Texas; Escuela Politécnica Nacional, Quito, Ecuador; Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brazil; Universidad Nacional Agraria la Molina, Lima, Peru; Universidad Mayor de San Andrés, La Paz, Bolivia; and Universidad de los Andes, Bogota, Colombia, have collected and generated extensive data sets for rivers and watersheds within the Andean Amazon region. This program is recognized as a Collaborative Research Network of the Inter American Institute for Global Change Research, one of just 14 in the hemisphere. This group collects data such as water quality and quantity, climate and soil parameters, land use and land cover, indicators of socioeconomic indicators, species and habitats, etc. Analyses of these data resulted in numerous reports, maps, charts and publications known as the AARAM -Andean Amazon Rivers Analysis and Management project (http://aaram.fiu.edu). The AAGWP project aims to create a standardized GIS web portal to serve scientific data and other information collected for the Andean Amazon region. Foreground
Thanks to a National Leadership Grant from the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the FIU Library's GIS and Remote Sensing Data Center will partner with FIU's Environmental Studies Department and Ecuador's Docente Escuela Politecnica Nacional to build the Andean Amazon GIS Web Portal (AAGWP). FIU’s Latin American and Caribbean Information Center (LACIC) will also connect this Web Portal with its existing Latin American information network to support a series of ongoing outreach initiatives. AAGWP will be used to support these initiatives and other educational programs to positively contribute toward resource management and environmental protection in the region.