Intern Spotlight: Collecting Spatial Data to Produce Maps in the Makgadikgadi Region of Botswana

by Henry Dodge, Colby College

Hello Round River community!

My name is Hank Dodge and I’ve had the privilege of being an intern for the Round River Botswana program throughout the month of January 2018. As a student at Colby College – and a former Round River student in Botswana – I was gathering data for Round River on the Makgadikgadi region during the Fall 2017 semester. An opportunity arose for the possibility of returning to Botswana and I jumped at it!

This month has been a blast! Most of my tasks were centered around collecting spatial data in order to produce maps on the Makgadikgadi region. Kaggie, Samara, and I have been running around town talking to people and inquiring about information on the area. We’ve been to the Okavango Research Institute (ORI), government agencies, and independent researchers to get a better idea of the region. All of this data gathering culminated in a trip down to the Makgadikgadi National Park to see the area we had been mapping first-hand and a stay at Meno-a-Kwena lodge! The trip was incredibly helpful in improving our understanding of the community in an area Round River could potentially expand to.

Showing the maps we created at Colby to Meno-a-Kwena safari guides.

In addition to data gathering, I also contributed some maps to the NG/18 herbivore monitoring report, which is a subset of the larger report that Round River gave to the communities. It was a great opportunity to synthesize data from past semesters as a former student who contributed to this work!

Lastly, I started to create QGIS tutorials for a computer training that Round River is going t host for the community escort guides they work with in March. Working with the communities here in Botswana is the main focus for Round River so it was nice to know that my work here could help with these efforts.

It was so fun to explore the Makgadikgadi region with Kaggie and Samara and talk about potential new projects for Round River!

Seeing Kaggie and Sixteen again, meeting Samara, and getting to travel through the communities that I have such fond memories of as a former student was an experience I’ll never forget. As an intern, getting the chance to see what preparing for a Round River semester looks like has further cemented my already high opinion of the Botswana team – the students arriving in early February are in good hands!