"By the 1980s, countries began to recognize that forests have a Global role in the stability of the biosphere, in the maintenance of biodiversity, in the protection of threatened indigenous and traditional cultures, as well provide unique ecosystem services. Proper management of forest resources is only possible based on accurate and reliable information. There is increased international tendency towards the use of powerful and flexible geospatial technologies such as GIS (geographic information systems) and remote sensing (satellite imagery) (GIS&RS) in various applications. SUFOGIS proposes a “knowledge-competence-skills based” innovative approach that will be developed in close collaboration with the project EU partners. The main outputs of the project will be: Report on the situational analyses in RU and CH in the field of GIS&RS, workshops for 200 participants, 56 persons from Partner countries will get training in EU, two summer schools in EU for 36 students from Partner countries, one platform to promote the ""University-enterprise"" collaboration in the field of GIS&RS, Guidelines ""How to promote the knowledge transfer in GIS&RS”, 25 Case-studies, GIS&RS centers established and equipped in RU and CH HEIs, Quality assurance plan, 200 evaluation reports of staffs, trainees and students, 2 reports of external experts, the project’s web portal, 8 Info-days in EU, RU and CH, two dissemination conferences in CH and RU, 6 E-bulletins for the wider community. More specific impacts of the project include creation of: a wide professional network of the organizations in Partner countries that will be interested in the project outputs and findings, new jobs and new opportunities for business initiatives by young scientists."

"The number of satellite programs dedicated to Earth observation has increased significantly over the last decades and will further increase in the future. Remote Sensing (RS) data offer the potential for more and more detailed and accurate mapping of land and contributing to the decision making. There is a large gap between the data collection and application. The application oriented education can contribute to increase the fields of applications. RS can be an essential tool in decision making, as it provides up to date information for decision makers on several aspects of Earth sciences, including hydrology, ecology, oceanography, glaciology, geology. Furthermore it has military, intelligence, commercial, economic, planning, and humanitarian applications. The EU space strategy in the document “2016 Communication on a Space Strategy for Europe” fosters the uptake of space techniques applications. ""The Commission’s aim is to optimize the benefits that space brings to society and the wider EU economy. Achieving this means boosting demand among public and private users, facilitating access to and use of space data, and stimulating the development and use of innovative downstream applications."" The demand is in line with the practice observed in the field of RS, which has wide range of potential applications unused.Beyond the international demand on broaden the range of RS applications both for public and private users and deepen the knowledge on the RS applications, also a demand on national level (Thailand, China) has been feedbacked. Universities can contribute to these demands by preparing widely accessible educational materials and supporting tools. The Learning Management System (LMS) developed within the frame of the IRSEL project may strengthen research, results in an uptake for the knowledge society, promoting the professional development of staff of related interdisciplinary fields. The LMS contains 20 modules in the field of Remote Sensing applications. The developed modules are available on the Moodle platform of the partner universities, and can be accessed by their students and academic staff. In line with the EC policy initiative on open access, the consortium partners are committed to developing project materials for mutual benefit. Accordingly, the core content of the LMS can be accessed by the professional society at large, as a „reduced feature” of the modules (degrading the content to pdfs) is provide openly for anyone, accessible at the link ttps://lms.irsel.eu/ . After a simple registration procedure one can get access to these pdfs, note however, that the though the content is similar to the „full feature”, that is the more attractive, interactive.The project has aimed to support the e-Learning education with high quality software, hardware, and a reasonable research facility for delivering the necessary tools for data acquisition and data processing. The equipments are integrated into the Knowledge Centre with the aim to serve the Remote Sensing application related education and research activity beyond the project timeframe. Knowledge Centres at each partner universities have been installed. The software and equipment park has been planned and validated by considering the available resources of each partner universities.Beyond the students at partner universities, the users of the LMS shall include students, managers, practitioners, and policy makers who may or may not be having background knowledge in RS. The program aims to deliver an understanding of environmental issues in the context of sustainable development from both, a theoretical and practical perspective as well as essential knowledge, instruments, and techniques for sustainable management of challenging environmental development issues."

Soil and land degradation refers to all process(es) by which soil declines in quality and is thus made less fit for a specific purpose, such the crop production. Education will play a crucial role in the land degradation protection. This involves an opportunity and implies rethinking and reorganizing higher education institutions (HEIs) to become effective change agents in terms of learning outcomes for students. Coherently with the regional and international effort at political level, IUCLAND proposes to improve the effectiveness of development and land protection strategies by increasing cooperation capacity and best practices productivity, though educational patterns involving HEIs and all potential stakeholders, e.g. farmers’ association. The main objective is to create an international network in Land Degradation topics among universities and other organizations of the society at large aimed at:- establishing structured cooperation for scientific research and knowledge transfer;- starting summer school and workshop that will train the actual and future generation of academics able to do research and produce innovation in the framework of land degradation. - exchanging experiences and good practices related to educational programs.These objectives will be realized also through short-term mobility of teachers, administrative and technician, students for putting in common educational programs, quality assurance procedures, teaching materials, and to improve them with input from society in terms of required skills and jobs in environmental topics. All the branches of Environmental and Agriculture Science, and Remote Sensing are involved. As a result, the promotion of homogenization dynamics affecting educational patterns will improve international cooperation ability and effectiveness supporting the efforts played at national and regional levels.