History and Concept of the Conference
XIIth Landscape Conference is expected to be the largest meeting of leading experts in landscape science, landscape ecology, landscape planning from Russia and foreign countries. Landscape Conferences have been organized regularly in the former USSR and later in Russia since 1955: I – Leningrad (now Russia), 1955; II – Lvov (now Ukraine), 1956; III – Tbilisi (now Georgia), 1958; IV – Riga (now Latvia); V – Moscow (now Russia), 1961; VI - Alma-Ata (now Kazakhstan); VII – Perm’ (now Russia), 1974; VIII - Lvov (now Ukraine), 1988; IX – Chernovtsy (now Ukraine), 1991; X – Moscow (now Russia), 1997; XI – Moscow (now Russia), 2006.
Since the last XIth Landscape Conference the professional community faces the need to generalize the results of studies performed with financial support from Russian Foundation for Basic Research and the other foundations. The Conference will focus at issues of crucial importance: mechanisms of landscape functioning as a complex dynamic system; self-organization and self-regulation of geosystems, emergent effects of landscape spatial structure; continuality and discreteness of geographical space and mechanisms of its development; multiplicity of stable states in landscapes of various geographical zones; forecast of region-specific responses to global environmental changes and evolution trends; socio-economic and ecological multifunctionality of a landscapes as related to territorial planning; methods of ecosystem services assessment at a landscape level; methods of allowable anthropogenic loads evaluation; landscape diversity as a condition for biological diversity; landscape-ecological rationales for nature protection.
The conference will provide opportunities to exchange methodological ideas involving: quantitative assessment of rates and volumes of matter flows; capacity of geochemical barriers; modeling geophysical differentiation; geoinformatic mapping and modeling using contemporary digital technologies and technical installations.
The social demand for landscape-oriented methodology in applied science stimulates organization of special sessions focusing on adaptation of forestry, agriculture, recreation, urban technologies to landscape pattern of a territory. Present-day land use dynamics on plain and mountainous regions will be assessed from the viewpoint of ecological functions of landscapes and sustainable development. Separate session will focus on the problem of landscape resilience in the oil and gas mining areas of West Siberia as well as landscape-ecological rationales for hydrocarbons mining and transportation.
The program includes the supposed discussion about mechanisms if socio-cultural influence on landscape structure and visual image. The perspectives of landscape policy and landscape management will be discussed with particular attention for the purposes of international landscape centers as a tool for dissemination of landscape knowledge among decision makers in politics, business and civil society. The role of comprehensive landscape science in geographical and ecological education will be analyzed.
The conference welcomes leading specialists from all the regions of Russia where landscape research is being performed as well as colleagues from adjacent countries, Central and West Europe.