CMRA 2021 Summer school: Modelling approaches for climate risk and adaptation in the context of agricultural sustainable intensification

The Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) and the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) invite applications for their international summer school CMRA2021: Modelling approaches for climate risk and climate change adaptations in the context of sustainable intensification in semi-arid West Africa. The summer school is planned for February, 2021 in Bamako, Mali.

The summer school will host 26 early- career researchers from West Africa and Germany and international experts to critically assess the role of crop modelling as a tool for climate risk assessments and the identification of climate change adaption strategies to support more sustainable and productive cropping systems in semi- arid West Africa.. The summer school aims to enhance awareness and appreciation of the state of the art in crop modelling for addressing climate risk and sustainable intensification among the region’s next generation of researchers and agricultural policy makers. The training will emphasis recent model developments, methodologies for analysis, as well as key limitations in their use and emerging complimentary data driven approaches. Best practices for stakeholder engagement, study design, data processing, scenario formulation, model selection, model parameterization, and uncertainty analysis will be explored. A second aim is to provide students with experience in designing projects considering transdisciplinary perspectives on how and to which extent CSMs can be applied for impact in decision making processes and sustainability outcomes for a range of actors. These learning objectives will be achieved through a balance of lecture with international experts; group discussions with peers and lecturers; model demonstrations; applied tutorial exercises; group work in designing and implementing model based analyses and student presentations. Lectures will be given in either French or English. The summer school will take place at the ICRISAT headquarters in Bamako, Mali and is scheduled for February 21-28, 2021 with a COVID-19 dependent back-up date of September 5–12, 2021. Applications are due by July 1st, 2020. For details on how to apply please visit the CMRA 2021 website.