Mountains cover a quarter of the Earth’s land surface. They are sources of water, food, timber, minerals and other natural resources; they provide many opportunities for recreation and tourism; and they are centers of biological and cultural diversity and religious significance. At the same time mountain ecosystems worldwide are under stress because of increased demand for their resources and stronger external forcing factors, such as regional landscape fragmentation and global climate changes. Mountain ecosystems are usually regarded as being highly sensitive to global change. However, because of system complexity and multifaceted interacting drivers, understanding of current responses as well as predictions of future changes are very difficult. The South Eastern European Mountain Research Network (SEEmore) was established in 2009 to further interdisciplinary and demand-driven Global Change research in the mountains of South Eastern Europe and Turkey. The SEEmore Conference 2012 is an international conference going beyond the network’s original delineation, as it includes mountains systems of the Caucasus, Iran, Levant and Middle East. The SEEmore Conference 2012 is also an expansion in terms of expertise. Apart from Global Change researchers, it invites representatives from practice to enter the dialogue with the research community, ultimately aiming at making mountain research problem and user oriented.

Main topics of the conference include:

• Topic 1: Climate Change: Past, present, future
• Topic 2: Land Use, Soil and Water Resources
• Topic 3: Forestry, Agriculture and Pastoralism
• Topic 4: The Human Dimension: Culture, Tourism and Economies
• Topic 5: Interdisciplinary Resource Management: From research to practice
   

More information on the conference: http://csaum.ankara.edu.tr/index_en.php.
More about SEEmore: http://mri.scnatweb.ch/mri-south-eastern-europe

Source: e-mail by organisers