Dr. Yaw A Twumasi

Dr. Yaw A. Twumasi is an author, experienced researcher, scholar and analyst. He received his B.A and M.E.S degrees from York University, Toronto, Canada. He holds a doctoral degree (doctorate) from Alabama A&M University in the United States of America. For more than 10 years, Dr. Twumasi has been teaching and conducting research using Geographic Information System (GIS) and Remote Sensing technologies.

His current research involves climate and global environmental change, sustainable development, energy policy, biophysical modeling of ecosystem services, conservation planning, natural resource management, including species conservation, land-use planning and management, biodiversity conservation policies, terrestrial ecosystems including coastal and tropical forest ecology, the impacts of global change on biodiversity, climate change adaptation and mitigation policies, Reduction of Emissions through reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) policies, applied GIS, global positioning satellites systems and remote sensing technology.

Dr. Twumasi has published and authored or co-authored more than 100 publications in a variety of refereed journals and international conferences and symposia proceedings, and has delivered numerous papers and presentations throughout the world on his research on a variety of topics addressing the use of remote sensing and GIS technology in assessing and managing Earth’s resources.

His book titled “Park Management in Ghana using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing Technology” published in September 2005 by Edwin Mellen Press, New York (ISBN: 0-7734-5990-1 / 9780773459908) has wide circulation globally in both academic institutions and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

In the fall 2005, Dr. Twumasi was selected as part of a team of scientists by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) to participate in the summer institute on the Application of Climate Forecasts, GIS and Remote Sensing Technologies to Water and Natural Resource Management at Sioux Falls, South Dakota with the broad theme of applying geospatial technologies as decision support tools for predicting environmental disasters, as well as food security in Africa.

He has served as a peer-reviewer for major national and international scientific journals relating to natural resources and applied remote sensing and GIS. Dr. Twumasi served as a guest editor of the American Journal of Science and Engineering special issue on the topic, “Geospatial Science and Technology Applications in Natural Resource Management” from October 2011 to October 2012. Dr. Twumasi has also been involved in a number of research projects including one “Land-Use and Land-Cover Change” in Sub-Saharan Africa.

In all these projects, Dr. Twumasi played key role in using earth observation (EO) technologies in solving a number of environmental challenges in that region especially mapping and analyzing relationships between human populations and distribution and flow of ecosystem services in order to assist and support decision-makers and planners to design and implement national, regional and global policies and development plans towards sustainable development.

In South Africa, Dr. Twumasi was part of the team that studied the impact of mining on the natural environment using GIS and satellite data. This was done in collaboration with other researchers at the University of Limpopo’s Department of Geography and Geoinformatics Division of the Agricultural Research Council Institute for Soil, Climate and Water based in Pretoria, South Africa.