GLAD

Yolande is interested in large scale hydrological modeling of the Congo Basin using remote sensed data. She came in the US in from the Democratic Republic of the Congo as a Fulbright scholar to pursue a Master in Water and Wetland Resource completed at SUNY/ESF (2007). In 2012, she joined the Geographical Sciences Department at the University of Maryland  to pursue her PhD Program under Professor Matthew C. Hansen, a program she started at the Geospatial Science & Engineering at the Geographic Information Science Center of Excellence (GIScCE) at South Dakota State University. Yolande had previously been funded by START/PACOM (US National Science Foundation/ US Climate Change Science Program) on a project entitled :“Satellite-derived Rainfall Estimates (TRMM products) used for Hydrological Predictions of the Congo River flow”. To pursue her PhD, Yolande was initially funded by a USGS - SWERA (Solar and Wind Energy Resource Assessment) NASA project, then by the USAID’s Central Africa Regional Program for the Environment (CARPE) at UMD (to this day) and by a NASA Earth System Science Fellowship Awarded to her to investigate Hydrological response to land cover and land use change in the Congo Basin.